The Strategy: Manipulation Tactics & The Undermining Of Equality Law

Funny how there's something VERY abusive & gaslighty-feeling about all this, isn't it? Almost as if some people SO hate women, they don't actually care about democracy, human rights, or equality.

Wow, a few weeks since I last updated (I’ve had a lot of work on), and SUCH lot of bullcrap going on to choose from! Whether it’s Eddie, Jason and the 21st Century, the bloke singing the misogynist song then getting his cock out on TV and being fawned over, a woman having her life-saving operation cancelled because a hospital didn’t agree with her “belief” in reality, Keir Starmer at a Pink News do declaring Labour would bring in Self-ID, and the SNP passing Self-ID by force, despite objections from some of its own MSPs. But hey, we didn’t get Penny Mordaunt as Prime Minister. I guess that’s one good thing.

At the moment, I’m really trying to put together, in my mind as much as anything, a clear picture of the tactics and strategy we’re seeing used against us again and again and again. It was actually one of the very first things I noticed about this supposed “human rights” movement about six or seven years ago that showed me immediately that something was very “up” here and that it wasn’t quite what it was purporting to be. It was authoritarian and sexist. It was telling lies about people and things I knew weren’t true. This wasn’t the new gay rights, and it didn’t seem to care much about either truth OR equality.

There are a lot of very manipulative, controlling and sometimes downright abusive tactics being used. Now, why should a genuine civil rights movement require any of those tactics and be spending its time and focus behaving like your common or garden domestic or sexual abuser or narcissistic control freak? And why on earth should we be expected to meekly submit?

For anyone who has ever been in an abusive or coercive relationship, there are certain steps in the relationship, ones all about CONTROL, that will probably be familiar to you.

• Abuser/Controller does bad or abusive thing to someone they want to control for their own selfish ends.

• If victim complains, abuser will deny and lie about it to anyone that will listen and spread their version of events

• Victim will be demonised for speaking out, using familiar DARVO tactics. The abuse will be framed as “their own fault”, they will be accused of lying and often, they will be framed as the aggressor themselves.

• If the authorities intervene, they will either be used manipulatively to increase the abuse at an institutional level, or they will themselves be criticised and undermined if they fail to follow what the abuser wants, so either way the victim knows they have no protection.

• The use of powerful and much-listened to influencers to spread the word about the abuser’s point of view, validate them as “the good guy” and how they are a victim in this situation, or to help them to maintain silence. The bigger the power of the influencing force, the better.

• Wherever possible, a situation will then be engineered where the victim gets punished publicly, which not only crushes them for good, thus compounding the original abuse, but serves as a public warning to any others who may cross the abuser’s path.

We’ve seen this dynamic play out so many times in various situations, that we should be able to recognise it by now: Savile, for one. We saw it with R. Kelly. We saw it with Weinstein. Sometimes those who behave like this get found out and caught out in the end, but so often they don’t, or not til years later.

There seem to be an ordinate number of people and organisations involved on the gender fundamentalist side in the “gender wars” who use the tactics Once you see the pattern, I’m afraid, you can’t unsee it. I don’t think it’s any coincidence that so many of the voices on the gender critical side of the argument, Jo Rowling and Rosie Duffield, for instance, have themselves been victims of domestic abuse and can spot the red flags immediately.

The Disinformation Campaign

In the last week, as one of several elements of what looks almost certainly like an organised and co-ordinated disinformation campaign around the main evidence-based gender critical talking points— you may have noticed the sudden attempts to refute and undermine the findings of the Cass Review, as well as the false narratives and fact-free celeb-supported defences currently being put out by Mermaids to try to disguise their Charity Commission investigation, all by stunning coincidence in the same week that the Chair of Stonewall turned up on the BBC claiming he wants to take the debate off Twitter (I bet you do, Iain)—it’s the turn of the Equality Act itself. Apparently, new PM Rishi Sunak’s stated plan to uphold the Equality Act 2010 as it stands and clarify that yes, that includes women too and sex being a thing, is a “horrendous Tory attack on trans rights.” So says Jeremy Corbyn, Sadiq Khan, Eddie Izzard and other of the left’s great and not at all hugely misogynistic luminaries

I would think that politicians who were around at the inception of the Equality Act (such as Jeremy) ought to be familiar with its original terms. It seems strange, then, that they appear not to have a problem with A Certain Organisation Beginning With S (and others) and their now obvious campaign to change the terms and protections of the Act, particularly as they relate to women , under the radar and without public knowledge, particularly the consent or knowledge of most of those whose rights they are aiming to dismantle, or any parliamentary oversight. Not to mention that the tactics used do seem uncomfortably familiar.

Step 1: Develop Desire To Compel “TWAW”, To Replace “Gender Reassignment” (and in many cases “Sex”) In Law With “Gender Identity” And To Remove Any Pesky Protections For Women That Stand In The Way Of That.

Given it’s the constant mantra, we all know that getting “Trans women are women, trans men are men, non-binary identities are valid” into law as some sort of undisputable and enforcable religious doctrine, has always been one of the key aims of the gender fundamentalist movement. We also know that Stonewall, once it decided to hitch its wagon to transactivism in 2015 and pretty much abandon any focus on lesbian and gay rights, specifically stated that it wanted womens’ right to single sex spaces removed from the Equality Act, where it is currently enshrined as an exception for dignity, privacy and where it is “a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim.” Such as, y’know, dignity and privacy and not being raped, a fate that the victims of are overwhelmingly (over 80%) female. But nah. They wanted it gone. No debate.

See the excerpt below, fourth point down, from Stonewall’s original recommendations for “trans equality” to the Womens & Equalities Select Committee in 2015. Women not to be so equal after all. Not to mention some of the recommendations about “transphobic hate crimes”, the use of the media, and self ID.

Step 2: Lie About The Equality Act & The Law And Disseminate The Lie On The Ground

Hey, but who needs fusty old politicians and boring old democracy, consensus or parliamentary process when you can just do whatever you’ve decided you want yourself anyway? After all, said Ruth Hunt, Stonewall’s CEO at the time, “We are not a democratic organisation.”

So former gay rights charity Stonewall, who were one of the main disseminators in the UK, with their Stonewall Champions program in almost every institution advising on “LGBT Equality” got what they called “ahead” of the law. They decided, in all the information they provided in their training, to deprioritise (and sometimes complete remove) sex as a protected characteristic, make out that it had been replaced by “gender” or “gender identity” in law ( it hasn’t at all) and advise organisations, including local councils, arts organisations, universities, the NHS, the police, the prison service, even the civil service, to “update” their practices, to replace sex with “gender identity” (you will often see this being the only option in questionnaires and so on, with sex nowhere to be seen. The legal challenge over Census data ). Usually leaving out women and specifically any rights that were based on biological sex, including the single sex spaces exemption, and claim that the law now says that all toilets etc should be “gender neutral”, for example and get them to enforce it.

(Examples of the questions and guidance still required to get onto their Champions List for 2023 have been dug out by Conservatives for Women. Now, I am not a Conservative or Conservative voter, but CFW have done good work here).

This, as Allison Bailey put it, is “Stonewall Law”, not “THE Law,” prioritises gender ideology and centering trans issues often to the direct detriment of those of other protected characteristics. As Akua Reindorf pointed out in the University of Essex case, organisations following Stonewall’s version of the law could actually find themselves with discrimination, particularly sex discrimination, suits as a result. It’s not equality. And. It’s. Not. The. Law.

• If you’re interested in more of Stonewall’s tactics and approach, do listen to the Nolan Investigates Stonewall Podcast on BBC Sounds if you haven’t already. It’s a bit brash in style and a few things have moved on since it aired, but it’ll give you a pretty good idea of what’s been going on.

• Stonewall is not the only organisation involved in enforcing this particular ideological position. The inexplicably not-yet-disgraced Mermaids provided training, and there are various other organisations who’ve been providing “advice” in schools, much of it focused on promoting what is often a deeply sexist and often homophobic ideology full of sex stereotypes, boundary-flouting and pseudoscience, all wrapped up in a pink and blue bow as “progressive education”. Get ‘em young, eh, and pretend that beliefs are facts? Not at all cultish. Here’s one Twitter user’s experience.

  Teajenny @galluslass

  @stellacreasy This is my child’s high school policy which allows any male student access to female students toilets and changing rooms - how does this rank in safeguarding Stella. I presume you support this policy though

  

  

  

  

• Not to mention the infamous Dentons Report, of course (discussion of it here by the Spectator’s James Kirkup). There are several key strategies involved which are seriously manipulative, not least the drive towards removing parental consent for what could be serious and irreversible medical interventions, but there is also this, for instance:

Anyway, here’s another tip from the document: ‘Tie your campaign to more popular reform.’

For example:

‘In Ireland, Denmark and Norway, changes to the law on legal gender recognition were put through at the same time as other more popular reforms such as marriage equality legislation. This provided a veil of protection, particularly in Ireland, where marriage equality was strongly supported, but gender identity remained a more difficult issue to win public support for.’

No kidding. Because most people don’t actually support claiming that a man is a woman just because he says he is, and that women and girls should have no right to single sex spaces. So in other words, the strategy is manipulate the public into thinking this is like gay rights. Forced teaming. Why should this need to be ‘hidden’ from the public if it’s all above board and simply a case of basic human rights? Why should I support anyone who uses manipulative tactics like this?

Step 3: Demonise All Opposition

We’ve all seen years of evidence now, demonising and lying about all the women who say "Hang on a minute, what? We need to discuss this..." No matter who they are, no matter their history, or previous activism, no matter what they’ve done in their life, no matter if someone with half a brain could easily see it’s totally illogical to claim they’ve suddenly become the complete opposite to who they’ve been their entire life, no matter their actual beliefs or political affiliations, nope. “These are the worst and most evil people in the world and all good people should HATE, shame and punish them.”

Whether it’s the absurd and libellous yet widely disseminated claim that longstanding lesbian rights activists are being paid by the American alt-right, the vicious, misogynistic and entirely propagandist hate campaign against JK Rowling (supported by people whom, without her, would genuinely not have acting careers, given their clear lack of acting talent), the frequent middle class “activist” campaigns to destroy womens’ livelihoods, report them to their employers, with menaces, for not agreeing that some men are women just like them, for questioning the ideology even in the smallest way, to destroy their lives for it. See Maya Forstater, Kathleen Stock, Jess de Wahls, Rachel Rooney, Gillian Phillip, Rosie Kay, and the many others who have been less high profile, who have had their livelihoods threatened by people who claim that by targeting women in this way, they’re somehow being righteous.

Here, for instance is “Lord” Michael Cashman (pretentiously) cheering on a disgustingly defamatory statement about Trans author Helen Joyce, falsely claiming she was “celebrating” the murder of three gay men. Is Michael exempt from the Nolan Principles? Why is defamation of this level considered okay? AND PEOPLE ARE ACTUALLY BELIEVING IT. This has direct impacts on the person they are falsely accusing. Do people who actually care about equality, human rights and fairness cheer on stuff like this?

Then there’s the deplatforming, such as of Germaine Greer, Julie Bindel and others. The threats and constant campaigning against MP Rosie Duffield, a former victim of domestic violence, to expel her from the Labour Party for refusing to agree that 60 year old Izzard’s misogynistic, stereotyped version of “girlhood” —he can move back into higher-paid “boyhood” by just taking his high heels off apparently—entitles him to demand any woman call him “she”, and any woman who doesn’t should “Get into the 21st Century" and be treated as a bigoted old hag. Despite many of us being considerably younger than Eddie.

Several senior members of the Labour Party, and pretty much all its youth wing, meanwhile, accuse these women of “hate-speech” and women’s and LGB groups that have a different viewpoint and discuss the issues, the misogyny, the homophobia, such as A Woman’s Place (set up by trade unionists) and the LGB Alliance (set up by several former gay activists, including many former Stonewall activists and supporters) are smeared by them as “hate groups”. Several MPs have happily spread defamations about them and demanded their “re-education” for having opinions about women’s rights that, until extremely recently were considered to be a bastion of left wing and progressive thought. The unions have sided with the abusers.

And then there are the threats. The death threats, the rape threats. The violence. The threats to beat women up in the street. All documented, as we know, and looking and sounding almost exactly like they come from violent male abusers. which, to be fair, they do, don’t they?

Then of course you have arch misogynist and self identifying “socialist” Billy Bragg intimating that these, often left wing women with long histories of activism, are somehow akin to genocidal Nazis for not agreeing to do what men like him tell them. Owen Jones, the Grauniad’s resident woman-hater, not only bullying at least one woman out of her job at the Guardian for having thoughts he disapproves of, but continually allowed to froth away with his misinformation and hatred, and then various supposedly “progressive” men in the public eye claiming that the vile abuse of these women standing up for their OWN current legal rights, can somehow be described as “accountability”. We didn’t sufficiently know our place. “She made me do it.” “Look what you made me do.” It’s subjugation.

The gleeful hatred of and demonisation of so-called TERFS or “GCs” (including by several batshit ivory tower “feminists” and many in the media), who are in fact just women who don’t believe men can change sex or in the regressively sexist notion woman is a personality type made up of sex stereotypes or a sexualised outfit, now becomes extremely edgy and fashionable among people who imagine such abuse of others is the clearest sign of being “left wing” and “progressive”. Left wing men especially seem to enjoy the chance to hate on the women, and supposedly “liberal” women to try to desperately prove that they’re good people and they’re not like those evil bitter ignorant old harridans who don’t know anything and didn’t actually get them their rights, oh no.

Step 4: When Official Bodies Notice & Try To Correct, Make Big Fuss and Act Like The Victim

When an official body who is actually in charge of these things, like the EHRC or the government, for instance, notices that in fact, incorrect information about UK law has been widely disseminated, that there is obvious confusion, so clarifies that the Equality Act hasn't in fact been changed to remove sex, sex hasn’t been replaced the nebulous, sex-stereotype-based “gender identity” and the exception about single sex spaces is still very much in existence, pitch a gigantic howling fit, claim you’re being victimised, and get as many media outlets and "progressive" politicians as you can to claim that "bigots" are trying to “remove fundamental human rights from innocent marginalised trans people”. Despite this being factually untrue, but hey, you can now lay it all at the door of the evil Tories and the American Evangelical Far Right. Which all the women who object are, according to you. They are the aggressors. It’s DARVO. And no, Eddie, this isn’t what was said. He didn’t say he wanted this at all.

Additionally, you make sure that you spread the word that biggest victims of violence in the world are trans people, THE most marginalised and hated minority, by using “hate crime incident” figures from the police. And the figures sound terrible, until you realise that “hate crime incidents” including someone saying something you didn’t like on Twitter, women pointing out men are male, etc. There is no comparison with anyone else in society. Like women for instance.

Nobody mentions women’s human rights in all this, or the original terms of the Equality Act. Women, who in the UK alone are murdered at a rate of one every three days (compared with zero trans murders here in over three years now). Women’s basic human rights, that were only little more than a decade ago included in the Equality Act (included from their original appearance in the Sex Discrimination Act) are now to be viewed as “bigotry”. And we know what happens to bigots. They get everything they deserve, right?

Step 5: Get Influential People To Show Support & Spread The Word Of Your Victimhood

And this is where you gather as much support as you can from the great and the good, and spread the word. And of course, if the people involved are influential (like politicians, say, or the journalists on the “side” you’ve always agreed with, and the organisations “your side” has always supported, and a few celebs known for being “on the right side of history”) then you’re laughing. NOBODY is going to believe those horrible women now, are they? Ugh, what awful bigots and terrible people they must be, and of course, when they talk about “sex based rights” in the Equality Act, they’re lying. (Women are always lying, right? Jumped up bitches). They’re such bad people they want to take rights away from the most marginal, vulnerable people in our society! What utter cows! Burn the witches!

Here’s London mayor Sadiq Khan, for instance, spreading the misinformation from arch-misogynists Pink News.

Again, nobody ever mentions womens’ rights now, except the Tories. Mentioning women’s rights or “biology” at all becomes widely known as a “transphobic dog-whistle”. “Progressive” newspaper reports talk about “trans rights” and women’s “controversial views” but never that this in reality is simply a fight by WOMEN to RETAIN their CURRENT legal rights, that haven’t actually been changed in law, and that many women don’t even realise yet are under threat.

Step 6: Make It A Fait Accompli That The Law Will Be Changed In Your Favour

Hello Keir, Hello Sadiq, Hello Nadia, Hello Stella, Hello Cashman, Hello Labour! “We’re not like those nasty Tories,” they’ll say, without proper scrutiny and discussion. “We’re going to make misgendering a hate crime, we’re going to bring in Self-ID, and if we do make misogyny a hate crime, we’ll make sure (with our Stonewall friends’ help, won’t we, Stella?) that we’ll pretend men who identify as women can suffer from it.”

Inclusivity? Diversity? Equality? Treating women as human? #WomensRightsAreHumanRights? Understanding what misogyny (hatred against women) looks like, and how it manifests and always has? That it’s about CONTROL AND SUBJUGATION? Punishment for not “knowing your place?” What do you think is happening in Iran, in Afghanistan and why?

Apparently not. There’s only ONE group’s rights that matter, in a supposedly “diverse” society and it’s not women. Women are evil unless they enthusiastically agree to subjugate their own needs and cheer on the dismantling of their own legal rights. Everyone else in society, apart from trans identifying people, can be disenfranchised and have their fundamental human rights—like freedom of belief, freedom of association, freedom from violence and abuse— stamped all over. No-one matters except one group.

Step 7: Ensure Your Victims Are Publicly Punished

The final step. Labour are in power. They enact what they said they would. They put it into law. It is now literally against the law for women to object to their redefinition as “pink” personalities, to mention sex, to state reality, to object to the underhanded way their rights were removed without discussion, to have single sex spaces or services.

Women are thus subjugated“Put back” in their place. Males rule. The only people who matter as “women” are the male ones. Many of the gains of the last 50 years, lost. Women are what men say they are. They do not have a say, and they are not permitted boundaries. If they try to instigate them or say no, they will be punished.

The whole thing has been a power grab by mostly abusive, coercive male people who really, REALLY hate women. It’s been a wholly non-democratic, manipulative, misogynistic strategy to dismantle the rights of all the women in the country. But nobody in positions of power who could have done so chose to stop them. Job done.