"I am convinced that the preferential choice for the poor is a source of extraordinary renewal both for the Church and for society, if we can only set ourselves free of our self-centeredness and open our ears to their cry." Pope Leo, Dilexi Te

The real strangeness is the sudden allergy to weaponised 'guilt' from a political tendency which loves to assign guilt by association to people who aren't white men.

Seeing discourse on 'right to belief' and it's making me think of how many people seem to demand One Single Consistent Ontology of Transness before they'll accept it and, like, the whole history of philosophy shows we don't even have a single consistent ontology of humanness.

Broke the 50k word barrier! Actually having a readable book by the Jan deadline feels somewhat doable now!

Six draft chapters. None of them really end yet. Need to write a 'context and rationale' type intro. 2 days of study leave left before we're back to 'somehow write in "spare" time. Need to do So Much Editing.

I'm not saying Starmer wants Farage to be the next PM, I am saying that if he did want that this is the kind of thing he'd do.

It's alarming how many people need to hear this: racism is not the natural and inevitable response to the presence of (the wrong number of) racialised Others. It is a learned response, and as such it is contestable and replaceable. This is anti-racism 101. Entry level stuff.

If you want a sense of the kind of nonsense that's in this book,I just cited Andrea Long Chu and Aquinas in the same paragraph, just after responding to Marquise Bey with the preface of a liturgical manual from the 1860s.

Please God. Can some mainstream news outlet explain properly how long and how costly the immigration process in the UK is? And that there is NO RECOURSE TO PUBLIC FUNDS the whole time. And you PAY A SURCHARGE for the NHS. And you pay your taxes.

4 chapters drafted, hitting the 'what if this is all nonsense' stage #amwriting

And even then, this...does not seem like it would be more efficient in any way? I simply would not do this.

AAAAAAAAAAAAH

At the 'oh, wait, that's cool and kind of relevant, but where does it fit' stage of trying to hold a book length argument in my head...

Possibly a ch2 draft completed now? Next task is to work out which chapter is chapter 3... #amwriting

Decent chunk of ch2 drafted today, from a starting point of 'ch2 exists entirely in my head and nowhere else' #amwriting

So, an Equality Act that worked perfectly well in reality before the Supreme Court debacle, now no longer functions in a way that businesses can follow and adopt. And what does Falkner do? She throws businesses under the bus and makes them try to swim through the mess she’s created.

First draft of the first chapter complete. Very choppy, will need much much editing, but a draft is better than no draft.

Would really appreciate prayers for this - the responsibility of writing trans theology in These Times feels really big...

Just fundamentally not sure my already jumpy nervous system is made for this. Maybe I should nest in the library without socials.

Ok, revving up for 2 weeks in the library to finish the first draft of the book. Prepare for this becoming purely ~accountability posting~

Really kind of over watching things turn darker and darker through the medium of microblogs

Terrifying how easy it is to lose materials. For years I had access to someone's big google docs library of trans books/articles/old zines. Always knew I should download it, but it was just there. And now it's not. All this stuff must exist somewhere, but reminds me to archive stuff locally, too!

Slightly diminish a book from the bible Emigration

Imagine having an unassailable majority and using it to enact the policies of a rival party with a tiny number of MPs whose politics you claim to despise...

I've always said that the nihilistic right are the most careful students of the postmodernists they decry. It's just that Derrida, Foucault et al saw themselves as showing how power makes meaning, while the lesson these guys took was 'the only thing that means anything is power'.

Ok, it's 'churn out a first draft' month, and this will apparently be driven entirely by rage and futility

Seems bad tbh

I want to explain a few things and then it might be clearer why UK trans people are upset. In 2001 I married my wife, Sylvia. In 2005 I started medical transition. (1/13)

Finally read Andrea Long Chu's 'Females' (after mostly being aware of if via people who think it's the devil) and...I'm not sure I agree with her, but I don't think any of her cis critics have ever read or understood any of the things she's in dialogue with

My special edition of the Heythrop Journal on Catholic "gender theory" rhetoric is now out! Featuring an editorial that's also a comment on the state of the field, patristic theologies of transness, anti-gender politics, and moral theology! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/14682265...

The NHS are forcibly detransitioning trans kids in Brighton and calling it “managed withdrawal.” Their own impact assessment acknowledges trans kids will be at increased risk of harm as a result, don’t want this, and are likely to just use DIY hormones instead

I'm going insane. People who have obsessed over 'chilling effects' and 'self exclusion' resulting from trans inclusion are now arguing that forced public outing and the abolition of any legal mechanism for including trans people as our genders won't result in the exclusion of trans people.

scream

Completely normal and proportionate to respond to 'some people are trans' with 'so everyone not perfectly gender conforming must now carry their birth certificates to use bathrooms, and orgs will break the law if they don't ask for them, and also if they ask for them wrong'

Anyone still think that mainstreaming sex/gender as an absolute, uncomplicated binary was good comms?

It is unthinkable how anyone would see links between gender-critical views and fascism, says report that has only pages earlier accused its enemies of decadent academic sophistry which threatens both the foundations of 'normal life' and indeed Truth itself...

I may have said this before, but it's very hard to work out what gender reassignment protections mean post SC ruling, other than maybe 'no-one can fire you exclusively for saying you're trans or wearing a dress to work'

This is really good - and the dynamics at play are repeated beyond the university. Any gesture of inclusion is represented as unthinkably extreme, and the people who are excluded remain invisible, as do the harms they experience.

'The EHRC is legally bound to uphold equality for all protected groups without favour or prejudice. Yet the FOI materials paint a different picture - one in which the Commission leans heavily into gender-critical framing, while trans rights are sidelined'

But calling a trans woman a man is simply an expression of legally protected gender critical beliefs, and can never be an example of gender reassignment discrimination, am I right?

This is wild: 'trans people are bad because their transhumanist aspirations are too small' 'Biblical accounts of co-creation actually support my quest for immortal cyborg billionaires as long as you squint and ignore all the verses about justice'.

This lays out very clearly that Sex Matters is an organisation whose entire rationale is the elimination of trans people. Government ministers who meet them are condoning what will become genocide. yorkshirebylines.co.uk/news/home-af...

I am forced to self censor because of your illiberal attitudes. You are expected to show gracious restraint out of respect for differing opinions in this difficult area.

Given such sweeping protection for 'gender critical belief' (not just belief but deliberate activity to the detriment of trans people), I'd love to know what the OfS thinks gender reassignment protections look like. Is it just 'no-one can outright refuse to teach a trans person'?

It's like all politics for all my conscious life has just been that liberals want to be liked and fascists want to win. Which obviously means the liberals try hardest to be liked by the fascists, who'll say anything to get power and then do whatever they want when in power.

Judgement Day for the EHRC: How the equality watchdog turned into a toxic culture war campaign group iandunt.substack.com/p/judgement-...

A month on and the paralysis of trying to write in this political moment continues. Almost like we weren't supposed to mainline every detail of the rise of fascism internationally in real time via microblogs...

This weird use of the trans symbol to mean like 'gender neutral' reminds me of a place in Amsterdam which implied only trans people could use the bathrooms

Just came across an article on transness from the Church Times in 1979 which concludes that 'trans-sexuality [...] is further evidence that the human race is not, and never could be, neatly divided into two distinct sexes'...

A zine page on St Joan of Arc, for Joan's feast day ⚓