Janice Turner Quotes

[On the case of Karen White, born Stephen Wood (and retaining male genitals), a sexual offender against children and on remand as a rapist. White had admitted in court to the rapes committed before being held in custody.] I’d love to meet those who signed off this decision. What would they say to the four women who, within days of her transfer to New Hall prison in West Yorkshire, White had sexually assaulted? Confining a rapist in a women’s prison, among vulnerable inmates including rape victims, is like locking a fox in a henhouse. Yet they merely followed government guidelines "that prisoners should generally be housed in the estate that matches their expressed gender".

The tribunal is a timely reminder to the left that democratic norms are precious. If you try to crush every political opponent or believe intimidation is fine when it happens to the "bad guys"; if you declare that law-breakers you agree with should go unpunished, while those you disagree with don't deserve legal representation, you are no better than Trump or Orban. Stating that a lesbian does not have a penis is an inalienable right.

"It never happens," women were told when they worried that losing sex-segregated private spaces might allow attacks by predatory men. Yet, as FoI [Freedom of Information] requests by The Sunday Times last week showed, 90 per cent of sexual assaults in leisure centres are committed in gender-neutral changing rooms and only a tenth in single-sex facilities. It happens.

I'd never thought about my gender identity before. It hadn't occurred to me that not being a "girly" girl meant I wasn't 100 per cent woman. The point, I've always believed, is to expand the categories "man" and "woman", to tear down pink and blue prisons. So a little girl can like trucks, spacemen, getting dirty and still be a girl; a boy can put on nail polish, play with dolls and be no less a boy.

Almost daily in the Met, Andrea witnessed what in any other workplace would bring a visit from HR or even instant dismissal. She was paired with an officer who liked to park near secondary schools to ogle teenage girls’ breasts; colleagues constantly watched porn on their phones; a PC, convicted of gross indecency for masturbating on a train, kept his job; men would return from domestic violence scenes saying the victim was mad and deserved a slap.
If Andrea failed to laugh at such banter, colleagues would ask: "Are you on your period?" If she left her notebook lying around she'd find a penis drawn inside. Older women were "Dorises" or "white goods" (ie domestic appliances). When a young tourist disappeared, men gathered around the computer to gawp at her photograph, one saying: "She’s locked in my sex dungeon at home." When the station carpet was treated for a flea infestation they joked: "It’s for Andrea’s crabs."

In Canada assisted dying is available to almost anyone able to give informed consent if they first undergo counselling. Critics say euthanasia has been offered to the poor, disabled or just unhappy, including maimed military veterans.

True, different views on the surge in female-to-male transition were reported brilliantly last week by the Timess Janice Turner, one of the strikingly few women willing, in the face of concerted abuse, publicly to examine complex social and medical changes the authorities seem disinclined to explore. That such women are frequently and correctly described as "brave", for all the world as if they were war correspondents, only underlines the extent to which conventionally abhorrent exhibitions of bullying and hate-speech have been allowed to flourish here – with some of our most trusted adults leading by example.

In her book Material Girls, Stock asserts that although a person’s professed "gender identity" should be respected, biological sex is immutable and, in some circumstances — prisons, rape counselling, sports — must take precedence to protect women’s rights. This mainstream opinion is protected under the 2010 Equality Act. Yet her persecutors believe trans people literally change sex. They believe that in granting her academic freedom, the university fails to be trans inclusive. "We are not up for debate," they say.
That such unscientific, magical thinking has become sacrosanct is calamitous for academics, especially feminist scholars who study how women are historically oppressed via their reproductive role. An Edinburgh lecturer in gender and education tells me she offered students both LGBTQ and feminist reading materials. "As with any subject, I tell them to examine all sides, to think, talk, then form a considered view." For this she was reported to the staff Pride network, which solicits student complaints, and then quietly dropped from lecturing on gender.
Across British campuses women academics — and it is always women — face threats, witch-hunts and lost livelihoods for holding gender critical views.

[T]rans demands and women’s rights are often in such clear and irreconcilable conflict. Take Martin Ponting, jailed in 1995 for raping two girls, one disabled. After cosmetic surgery, but still possessing male genitalia, Ponting, now called Jessica Winfield, was moved to Bronzefield women’s prison but after making unwanted sexual advances to inmates has been segregated. Are you appalled that a rapist is confined with women prisoners, mainly non-violent offenders and themselves often victims of male sexual abuse? Do you think the Soham murderer Ian Huntley should never be allowed to transfer even if, as reported, he calls himself "Lian"? Then you too are a TERF and deserve to be punched.

Even so, would a state-run plan to bump off the old ever be acceptable? Since assisted dying was legalised in the Netherlands in 2002, the parameters have extended far beyond allowing a merciful release from terminal suffering — which most of us support — to include even young people with depression.

On election eve, the Guardian journalist and Momentum activist Owen Jones posted a photograph of himself in a grinning thumbs-up with a young woman whose T-shirt slogan read: "Will suck d*** for socialism."
I apologise for the crudeness. But reading this filled me (and many others) with disgust and despair. Not just because it took the old Stokely Carmichael notion that a woman’s place in the revolution is "prone" and rebranded it as woke feminism. But because it encapsulated the worst of Corbyn Labour: believing a crass, narcissistic social media clique, which it allowed to act as party proxies on radio or TV, was a useful electoral tool. Here was Jones, a Labour insider with a million Twitter followers and a national newspaper column, writing about women giving sexual favours for votes as Britain went to the polls. I thought of the words on a magnificent Dockers Union banner: "We shall not cease until all destitution, prostitution and exploitation is swept away" and wondered how Labour fell so low.

Stock is no right-wing bigot but a mild-mannered, dry-humoured, left-wing lesbian. An acclaimed philosopher who received an OBE last year, she teaches trans students, respecting their pronouns, and has written repeatedly in support of their human rights. It is bleakly ironic that she is accused of "endangering" others just for holding heretical views, when police have warned her to stay off campus and take security measures for her personal safety.

[T]he current trans movement is doctrinaire, uncompromising. Led by mainly older trans-women — ie born men — it won’t acknowledge women's rights or feelings. It fights for two principles. First, "self-definition": a person is the gender they "feel" inside, so a trans-woman "is" a woman even without physical change or while retaining male genitalia. Second, "affirmation": everyone must acknowledge this inner gender identity. Hence the right to waltz into women’s private spaces is sacrosanct.

I will use female pronouns for some trans women. My rules are personal. I will call no male who commits a sexual or violent offence "she". But those who respect women, like Debbie Hayton, or those I meet in real life, I will respect. This will win me abuse on both sides: Stonewall would say the choice should not be mine; gender-critical ultras will cry traitor. But I reject all compelled speech.
Using pronouns doesn't mean I no longer believe sex is real. I use them, in their original sense, as a courtesy. You can hold concerns about youth transition without screaming at a bereaved mother that her child was a boy.

The International Olympic Committee's rule changes on transgender athletes have been applauded as a human rights victory. No longer will trans-females be required to have surgery. To take part in women’s events, they need only declare themselves female and keep their testosterone levels below 10 nmol/L for a year before competing.
Arne Ljungqvist of the IOC’s medical committee welcomed this as "more flexible and more liberal". And it is great news — unless you are a woman athlete.
Testosterone levels in healthy men range between 7.5 and 25 nmol/L. Normal levels in women range from 0.20 to 3 nmol/L. So a male-to-female trans athlete will be allowed to have more than three times the upper range of this performance-enhancing hormone than a born woman. And while taking female hormones reduces male muscle mass and bone density, many biological advantages remain. Men have bigger skeletons, longer stride, larger lung capacity, and a narrower pelvis — unhindered by female reproductive organs — all better suited for speed.