STEPH Paton recently commented in The National about the Channel 4 programme Gender Wars filming a talk by Professor Kathleen Stock at the Oxford Union (Why this documentary has angered trans people, May 29). It seems they had not seen the programme by that stage, but that was obviously not a problem for them.
In the article Steph talks of “a community facing legitimate threats of being excluded further and further from society”, talking as they always do about the transgender community. The sense of victimisation is intense and I’m sure sincerely held, but no-one is excluding, or worse, creating a “genocide” of trangender people, as some trans activists claim.
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People like Paton, or university students who should know better, are indeed implementing a cancel or no-platforming culture directed at outspoken women who believe sex matters in all aspects of their lives. The cancel culture is real, documented, not supposed. Do your homework Steph.
Trans activists do not want to engage in dialogue. They picket a film so no-one can see it, because they disagree with the ideas being discussed – which, in an academic setting supposed to challenge received wisdoms, is a bit rich. That is certainly not the sign of a healthy society or a healthy young generation. Trans activists also disrupt groups of women with threatening behaviour, often hiding their faces behind masks. Not just cowards, but the usual male threatening behaviour towards women who won’t wheesht.
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Paton also notes that far from being cancelled, women like Professor Stock carry on speaking and being interviewed. Wow! How dare she? Paton and pals would love to silence these pesky women forever. How dare they speak up, when they have been hounded out of their jobs, or threatened with decapitation? Remember that famous banner in Glasgow? Yet these women will not shut up.
Steph, women have been told to shut up and put up for centuries. And surprise surprise, some women find the strength to carry on irrespective of the threats from some privileged middle-class boys and girls who have no worthy cause to pursue except their own self-obsession. You don’t see them fighting for the rights of disabled people, do you, a far more numerous group of people objectively discriminated against in all aspects of their lives. But disability is hardly a sexy cause, is it?
Get your act together The National. Women are furious. Look at Spain. This is doing the independence cause no good at all.
Dr Mireille Pouget
Dollar
I WRITE it support of Angus Shaw’s letter in Saturday’s National. Mr Shaw highlights the fact that the columns of this paper are now filled with diatribes on wokeism, republicanism, egalitarianism, secularism and LGBTism. Where is the nationalism?
I can understand Mr Shaw’s disenchantment. Scottish nationalism is not about sexual desires, or a wish to hang every earl from the nearest lamp post, it is about regaining our independence. I have been an SNP member from the early sixties; many of their current policies cause me irritation yet I remain a member. The reason I remain a member is that it is the only organisation which can get us independence if only it would heize aff its hurdies.
In this last paragraph I stray into the letter from Ken Gow, also in Saturday’s paper. Take the gloves off. If the English government says no, do it anyway, see what the unmentionables do about it, and keep on doing it. Scotland needs action not blethers. Let the world see who is messing who about.
R Mill Irving
Gifford, East Lothian
THE Scottish pro-independence movement will achieve its aims through the democratic support of the Scottish people at the polls.
We are a nation. We must act as one, so that the rest of the world sees clearly that the Scottish people mean to accept the responsibilities of a nation.
Conversely, the Scottish Unionists plainly demonstrate that such people are unwilling to accept the responsibility of Scotland as a nation! Simply put, these people demonstrate abjuration of this responsibility.
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Is this because these “Scots” believe that by being tagged on to England, they are obtaining something for nothing (ie the meta-narrative that England subsidies Scotland?) Or perhaps that by sooking in with England, they will secure a miraculously long and glorious career as the Anglo-Scot with the mid-Tweed accent?
Our aims are clear, as are the steps envisaged on the road to self-government, but there are many distractions. The English political parties try to persuade us that electing a government in London is more important than having our own government in Scotland. Each of the parties opposed to us seeks to confuse the Scottish people with futile fantasies which are floated to hide the fact that they have no solution for Scotland’s problems.
WJ Graham
East Kilbride
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