Joyce Activated

This week I’m going to write about Matt Walsh’s new film, “What is a Woman?”, which I had intended to cover last week before being derailed. So I won’t do a full review, but instead simply say what I think I can add to an already rich discussion.

I’m sometimes asked why I don’t talk about people for whom transition was the best option. I give part of the answer in my book—that what I’m interested in isn’t trans people per se, it’s the notion that some men can “really be women” and vice versa, and its impact on society

Barrister Cathryn McGahey likened Allison Bailey’s sexual orientation—that of a female exclusively attracted to females—to the male sexism that holds women back in the workplace, and to the racism of the white supremacists who fought to sustain apartheid.

Bailey alleges that her chambers, Garden Court, together with the LGBTQ+ charity Stonewall, victimised her in various ways for her gender-critical beliefs, her lesbianism and her backing for the LGB Alliance, a new charity that focuses on advocacy for lesbian, gay and bisexual people...

From now on, most issues of this newsletter will go only to paid subscribers. I’m always astonished when people talk as if a very little child’s fantasy of being the opposite sex is something sui generis. Do these people know any children? If they do, they must be remarkably unobservant…

From this point on most issues of this newsletter will be subscriber-only. If you sign up in the coming days for a full year I’ll send you a signed copy of my paperback! (If you’re outside the UK, we’ll have to discuss postage.) It’s due out

One of the most vexed questions for all of us writing about the sex’n’gender mess is that of “preferred pronouns”. Media guides from trans lobby groups and official regulators like IPSO [https://www.ipso.co.uk/media/1275/guidance_transgender-reporting.pdf]—and also, unfortunately, the internal style guides

I feel I owe it to my new subscribers to talk a bit about The Lunch. If you haven’t read the pieces by Julie Bindel [https://unherd.com/2022/04/jk-rowling-and-the-lunch-of-secrets/] and Suzanne Moore, you definitely should—and also the op-ed by Janice Turner [https://www.thetimes.co.uk/