roadlesstraveller ... on the road to substack

I have moved up in the blogging world to the platform du jour that is Substack.

From now on my posts will be at https://roadlesstraveller.substack.com  

Green Party Women EGM on discrimination against gender-critical Greens

The Green Party suspended my membership for two years, 2021 to 2023, for alleged transphobia and anti-semitism. All the charges were dismissed in April 2023. (For more see flimsy-evidence and vindicated-at-last and Cancel-culture-Green-Party.)

Green Party Women convened an EGM on 1 August 2023, part of which was to hear stories from members about discrimination for having gender-critical views. Here is what I said to the EGM.

the flimsy evidence in my Green Party case

The Green Party suspended my membership for two years, 2021 to 2023, for alleged transphobia and anti-semitism. All the charges were dismissed in April 2023. I have blogged about this already: about the result at vindicated-at-last-green-party and about the process up to the hearing of the complaint at Cancel-culture-Green-Party.

Speech to Colchester Cabinet about Outhouse

This is my speech in the HaveYourSay slot to Colchester City Council Cabinet Meeting on Wed 12 July 2023.  It starts at 16:35 minutes and ends at 20:05 minutes. 

Outhouse LGBTQ+ lobby group based in Colchester

Outhouse, based in Colchester, has total reserves of £911,511 and its income has risen by over 50% a year from 2019 to 2022, as shown in this Charity Commission graph. 

Don't throw Foucault out with the Judith Butler bathwater

While I like Helen Pluckrose and agree with much of Critical Cynical Theories, here is an antithesis from the Genspect Bigger Picture Conference last month. 

Heather Brunskell-Evans, a Quaker and a philosopher, explains why we shouldn’t throw the Foucault baby out with the Judith Butler bathwater. The Confluence of Philosophy, Feminism & Queer Theory. 

Also at Genspect Bigger Picture Conference: Gender Ideology as a Religion with Colette Colfer.

Quakers in Britain Yearly Meeting 1 July 2023

I attended today’s late ‘supplementary’ session of Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM) - www.quaker.org.uk/ym - which is effectively the AGM of Quakers in Britain. This year, BYM took place as usual in April but - unusually - there was an extra day added on, which was today.

2022 audited accounts still not ready

The main reason for holding today’s late supplementary meeting was because fully audited accounts were not ready by the scheduled BYM date in late April. With many apologies and a reassurance that nothing funny was going on, the BYM trustees announced today that the accounts were still not ready but they would be ready in time for the Charity Commission deadline on 31 October. The question arises, why wasn’t today’s supplementary meeting scheduled for a date when fully audited accounts would be ready?

Parkrun records held by transgender male-to-female runners

Being an occasional Parkrunner (struggling to break my personal 30-minute target), I was shocked to hear Olympian Sharron Davies say that course records on Parkrun are now being set by male-to-transwomen. Timestamp 6:09 at Fairness in sports governance: A Sex Matters webinar 28 June 2023.

Two transgender male-to-female runners, Siân Longthorpe and Lauren Jeska, hold Parkrun records in the women's 45-49 age group category and the women's overall category respectively.

Why did the Green Party do so badly in the May council elections in Brighton & Hove?

In the elections to Brighton & Hove City Council on 4 May 2023, Labour won 38 seats, the Green Party won 7 and the Conservatives won 6, with various independents winning the remaining 3 seats. For the Green Party that was a loss of 12 seats compared to 2019.

Why did the Green Party do so badly?

Vindicated at last: Green Party dismisses complaint against me

Last week the Green Party Disciplinary Committee (DC) dismissed a complaint made by a party member against me over two years ago, which had put me on a ‘no-fault suspension’ (NFS), as described in my earlier blog: roadlesstraveller.blogspot.com/2023/01/Cancel-culture-Green-Party.html

Art or porn in Paris exhibition

"Ma Pensée Sérielle" by Miriam Cahn (17/02/2023 to 14/05/2023 at palaisdetokyo in Paris) has been criticised for appearing to depict an act fellatio on children. But it’s intended by the artist as a critique of rape as a war crime.

Quakers and Mermaids and me

Quakers have been slow to realise the dangers of the transgender craze that has been gathering pace for about a decade now in the UK and the West generally. It is mutilating and sterilising physically healthy young people and putting them on cross-sex hormones for life. It is a phenomenon that is as wanton and inhumane as it is unexpected and generally ignored. 

Is Dr Adrian Harrop a secret Terf?

Dr Adrian Harrop is the GP who made a fuss to Liverpool Council about KJK's Adult Human Female poster. He won round 1 by getting the 'transphobic dog-whistle' removed, but lost the bout in that the surrounding publicity brought KJK's Adult Human Female message to many more people's attention than one poster in Liverpool could ever have done. Trans Central must be wondering if Dr Adrian is a secret Terf! 

Detrans Awareness Day on 12 March but not on LGBT Calendar

#DetransAwarenessDay, which is annually on 12 March, is omitted from the pinprick.shop 2023-lgbt-calendar. How odd. But hey, it's probably nothing compared to International Pronoun Day on the third Wednesday in October or Gay Uncle Day on second Sunday in August.

LGB vs TQ+

 

I posted this on my Fakebook this week and one of my FB friends asked me to explain what it was about. Some artists eschew queries about their work but they're the pretentious ones and I'm not one of them.

Qwoke Youth and Wise Elders - the Quaker Gender War

This post starts with a long, negative criticism of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) and, I’m glad to say, ends with a positive affirmation of where we could be heading.

The bad old news is that many Quaker Meetings have taken decisions over the last few years not to hire their meeting rooms to people who wish to discuss gender issues.

Masculinity, toxic and otherwise

This post compares two thinkers on the topic of masculinity and whether it is, to coin a phrase, toxic or not. They are Will Storr and Richard Wrangham.

Celebrating Colchester's City Status

Jumbo on the Hill

The people of Colchester are so proud of their one and only hill that they have named it four times: from the south it is Headgate, from the west, Balkerne Hill and, from the other two compass points, it is North Hill and East Hill.

Moonage Daydream of gender-bending David Bowie

Moonage Daydream is a brilliant audio-visual collage of David Bowie’s life and art, mainly his life as a performer from Ziggy Stardust to Let's Dance: the 1970s to 1980s, that is. Directed by Brett Morgen, it showcases Bowie's many talents besides being a singer-songwriter with mercurial and chameleon-like charisma: his dancing and mime and painting skills and all-round creativity.

I should declare that my sister’s best school-friend’s mum was good friends with David Bowie’s mum in Boring Beckenham where we grew up together - not Cool Brixton, as Bowie claims (yet again) in this film - so I practically knew the guy!

Explaining Postmodernism by Stephen Hicks

Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault by Stephen Hicks, Professor of Philosophy – recommended by Jordan Peterson – is free to read as a PDF and listen on audio at www.stephenhicks.org/explaining-postmodernism

Here are extracts from the Introduction about postmodern ‘Critical Legal Theory’ and the postmodern view of education.

Cancel culture and gender ideology in the Green Party

This is an extraordinary story of how an ordinary Green Party member was cancelled and suspended over alleged transphobia and anti-semitism in 2021 - for trying to assert women’s and children’s rights in a party that has been captured by gender identity ideologues.

My story is not unprecedented. The trouble has been brewing since at least 2016 (as I outline in Gender identity politics in the Green Party below).

My cancellation started in January 2021 when my 'gender critical' Green Space discussion page was abruptly deleted by the party’s chief exec. This was followed in February by complaints against me that led to a ‘no-fault suspension’ (NFS) for 'transphobia' and 'anti-semitism'.

That, gentle readers, is the short read. Please allow me to introduce myself and recount this sorry tale.

Quaker bookshop suppresses books by Quaker philosopher

Since 2018 the Quaker Centre Bookshop at Friends House in London has been suppressing gender-critical books by Heather Brunskell-Evans

trans day of remembrance for LGBT persons murdered by other LGBT persons

Just watched Maria MacLachlan’s YouTube entitled Handmaid's tale #3: Scott McLaughlin and noticed two comments:

• Jen Woo: I wonder if his name will be swelling the ranks for 'trans day of remembrance'
• dragonfox 2.0: will he be in the trans day of remembrance? god knows no trans "woman" should ever die

This sparked an idea, which is based on Counting Dead Women, the annual list published by Karen Ingala Smith, and which I’d like to outline here and ask: what do people think?

autistic teenager's hate-crime of questioning transgender PC

In February 2020 in Mold, North Wales, Declan Armstrong, 19, was convicted of using abusive or insulting words to cause harassment. He had asked if a transgender police officer “was a boy or a girl”. See www.womenarehuman.com/autistic-teen-found-guilty-of-hate-crime-for-asking-police-officers-sex-autism-group-condemns-prosecution