Sigridur Gudmunds

None of your business

[Sigridur Gudmunds @SiggaMex]

Again.

[J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling]

I have never denied that people who call themselves trans exist and in the UK, they rightly have exactly the same rights as every other citizen. What you want is for women to lose their sex-based rights to accommodate men who say they're women. That's the conflict.

[Sigridur Gudmunds @SiggaMex]

The woman!

[J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling]

A lot of us were very willing to have a debate without heat, @stonewalluk, and the reason that never happened wasn't because gender critical feminists didn't want one.

While we were trying to get you to listen to our concerns, your former CEO was telling a BBC boss that gay people not wanting to include the opposite sex in their dating pool was 'sexual racism'. While we were pointing out the homophobia inherent in gender ideology, Stonewall ambassador Alex Drummond (a bearded, heterosexual man who'd had no surgery and taken no cross-sex hormones but liked wearing skirts), was going into schools to talk to students about his 'lesbian' identity. @BluskyeAllison, who actually is a lesbian, was subject to unlawful discrimination at her place of work for tweeting: ‘Stonewall recently hired Morgan Page, a male bodied person who ran workshops with the sole aim of coaching heterosexual men who identify as lesbians on how they can coerce young lesbians into having sex with them. Page called [it] “overcoming the cotton ceiling”.’

When the UK Supreme Court upheld women's right to single sex spaces, you issued a statement expressing your unhappiness about the ruling. In her report on your unhappy influence at the University of Essex, you were found by barrister @akuareindorf to have misrepresented the law as it related to women's rights: '[Stonewall have] stated the law as Stonewall would prefer it to be, rather than the law as it is’.

In 2018, you publicly advised schools to shred a research pack saying there were risks to puberty blockers, in spite of the fact that you aren't a medical charity and that there was already credible evidence that puberty blockers are neither irreversible nor harm-free. Meanwhile you produced your own educational packs, recommending a children's book, for ages 5-9, in which the parent 'is neither a man, nor a woman – they’re non-binary.' In July 2022, Stonewall sent out a tweet that read ‘Research suggests that children as young as two recognise their trans identity'.

@thetimes has reported how you've sought to control the language used by NHS trusts and government on their social-media accounts. Organisations would get points from you for replacing commonly understood words with ideologically approved terms, eg, 'birthing parent' instead of 'mother'. https://t.co/Z2LGs2J9KQ

In short, you took a maximalist position on gender identity ideology, which you attempted to enforce by diktat. You refused to acknowledge that you'd hitched your wagon to a cause that, unlike civil rights, gay rights or women's rights, sought to strip rights from others. You sought to curtail everyone's right to freedom of speech and belief by controlling what it was permissible to think and say, through the management and political class. You have argued against women's and girl's rights to their own spaces, their sports and to assemble without men. Your former CEO tried to shame gay women/men into dating the opposite sex if the latter claimed to be female/male.

Your mantra was 'no debate' because, like all totalitarians, you preferred slogans, bullying and infiltration of powerful institutions to talking to opponents. You appear to have had no concern for the lowly people your ideology was harming: gender confused kids, female rape victims, female prisoners, regular people hounded and investigated at their places of work for refusing to accept the new mandates on sex and gender issued from on high.

Your 'activism' has been a disaster for those trans-identified people who really do just want to get on with their lives in peace. You have besmirched the name of an organisation many of us were once proud to donate to, the charity that was partly responsible for securing the legal right of gay people to marry, which a lot of us thought would never happen in our lifetimes. The milquetoast words quoted below do not erase a decade of gender activism that has been disastrous not only for individuals but for society as a whole.

There was once a debate to be had, but until you acknowledge the direct harm you've caused, it is no more possible to debate you than to persuade a person in the throes of a drug-induced psychosis that they are not, in fact, the reincarnated Christ.

[Sigridur Gudmunds @SiggaMex]

@sitsio I am one of seventeen catechumens and confirmants who will be recieved into the Catholic Church in our cathedral in Reykjavík on November 1st, All Saints Mass. People of all ages, young and older, former protestants and atheists. Our church is vibrant and reverent.

[Sigridur Gudmunds @SiggaMex]

!

[J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling]

I wrote a new piece about women’s rights and whether or not I want trans people dead. (Spoiler: I don’t)👇
https://t.co/BfxVLo0AD1

[Sigridur Gudmunds @SiggaMex]

@Pontifex Guð veri með þér heilagi faðir. Þú ert í bænum mínum alla daga.

[Sigridur Gudmunds @SiggaMex]

@AskATranswidow My deepest condolences.

[Sigridur Gudmunds @SiggaMex]

Interesting.

[Charlie Walsham @CharlieWalsham_]

I’ve discovered that I’m pretty good at beating people in arguments about certain subjects - but not because I’m unusually gifted or intelligent. I’ve sat down with friends who are much smarter and insightful than I am, yet still found that my logic defeats theirs.

I’ve come to realise why. On some topics, they haven’t considered their position at all. They’ve simply accepted it for other reasons: conformity with their peers, fear of ostracism, herd mentality - in other words, groupthink.

As the saying goes, you can’t reason somebody out of a position they haven��t reasoned themselves into.

So where do we go when logic, facts and reality have no impact on certain people?

And how do we move society forward when so many of those people occupy positions of power?

[Sigridur Gudmunds @SiggaMex]

Interesting.

[Carole Hooven @hoovlet]

Cremieux asks in his tweet below (with lots of great references) whether testosterone "radically increases risk-taking, aggravation, the propensity to commit violent acts, and so on." I'm glad he's explaining that testosterone's effects are not so clear cut! But I wish he'd given more consideration to the question of whether male-typical levels of testosterone increase the propensity for such behaviors in males. The answer to that question is "yes."

Cremieux is right that there is no clear evidence that male testosterone levels (within the normal T range) predict levels of sexual or aggressive behavior. It's great to get more eyes on that, and to bust the many myths. But the explanations for differences in behavior within a sex are quite different from those concerning differences between the sexes.

Cremieux primarily relies on research that addresses questions like: does a man's T level predict the intensity of his sex drive or the frequency of his violent behavior? The answer, generally, is no. (And he's right that a bigger body, more muscles or deeper voice, which are potentially associated with higher T at critical developmental stages, do impact behavior indirectly, but not in a clear way.)

But he then uses this “within sex” research to answer questions about the source of the gap between the sexes — in aggression, in sex drive, whatever. But answers to questions about how T predicts behavior in one sex do not address questions about the role of testosterone in explaining differences in behavior between the sexes. Such questions—e.g. why are males more violent than females— require different kinds of evidence, answering questions like what T does across development, why it does it, what happens when you manipulate it in other animals, and what do “natural experiments” in humans tell us? It's about the evolution of sexually differentiated reproductive strategies and the hormonal mechanisms that coordinate body and behavior in each sex.

An evolutionary perspective would have improved Cremieux's perspective. He tweeted that "the [sex] gap in violent behavior is far too large to be explained by testosterone levels." But the size of the sex difference is part of the point: 90-95% of all murders are committed by males, pretty much everywhere in the world. (The size of the gap is driven by differences in male behavior, which tends to respond to cultural incentives.) This pattern is not caused by small differences in T level; it is about large and impactful differences between the sexes in testosterone over a lifetime, that exist for a reason.

On average, a human male is exposed to T levels that are about 10-20 times higher than in females. Across development, male brains and bodies go through "critical periods" in early life (in the womb and shortly after birth) and adolescence, during which the brain and body are particularly sensitive to T's actions, which have permanent effects. So even if T is low in adulthood, it has already permanently affected reproductively relevant behaviors.

Evidence suggests that "sex-typical behavior" (with wide variation!) in male animals (including humans) is elicited once T passes something like a relatively low but male-typical threshold T level, at different phases of life. Above that, what seems to matter more is age, health, history, the ecological environment, and social cues and norms. In humans, these can include things like religion; socioeconomic status; availability of fertile females; disease; threats to resources, mates or children; community values; standards of masculinity; and the law.

Higher lifetime T in males (and not necessarily current T) is why many animals show similar sex differences in aggression, including higher rates of rough play. This is true even in humans, in which boys play rougher than girls around the world, even though little boys don't have higher T than girls. The male preference for rough play has been clearly shown to be driven by higher T, specifically in the womb and/or shortly after birth in male animals. Such play is part of a male reproductive strategy, motivating young males to practice status-competition and cooperation skills they will need in adulthood. In girls, those with unusually high T levels in the womb also tend to prefer rougher play.

Testosterone has these effects in males because of evolutionary pressures: males produce sperm rather than eggs, and thus have evolved reproductive strategies that differ from those of females. On average, males have a higher potential rate of reproduction and invest less in parenting, and generally (not always) compete more intensely for mates. Testosterone is the biological mechanism that coordinates the production of sperm with the other physical and behavioral attributes that help males get sperm to egg, given the species and environment.

Again, environment matters tremendously, but it is not the source of the sex differences in basic reproductive behaviors.

You can read more about testosterone and behavior in my book T: The Story of Testosterone, the Hormone that Dominates and Divides us.

[Sigridur Gudmunds @SiggaMex]

I agree.

[Charlie Walsham @CharlieWalsham_]

I sometimes wonder: what’s the point of posting on here?

Is it possible that I’ve ever changed anyone’s mind? No. Not a chance.

Is anyone on here changing anyone’s mind? Making them think? Making them consider, even for a moment, that they might be wrong? I doubt it.

What this platform really does is shine a spotlight on the sheer number of people who are so lost they haven’t got a clue. They’re trapped in intellectual silos.

And you might say: “Well, maybe you are, Charlie. Have you thought about that?”

Yes. I have. I think about it all the time. I ask myself whether I’m wrong about the big issues.

But then I realise that my opinions are broadly in line with what they were 20 years ago. And I wasn’t crazy then.

It wasn’t crazy to believe that men are men and women are women, and that a man declaring himself a woman doesn’t make it a reality.

I used to think Israel always massively overreacted when it was attacked. But I still believed Israel was a country worth defending against the death-cult nihilism of Islamist militias.

I believed immigration could be a good thing, but not if it was out of control, and not if we mindlessly allowed thousands upon thousands of people to arrive from parts of the world where deeply regressive cultures were firmly embedded.

And I believed British values - free speech, democracy, the rule of law - should actually mean something.

Yet now we live in a world where you have to persuade people that up is up and down is down. That some basic things are simply real, and that we all used to know it.

I’m sick of people trying to gaslight us into oblivion.

And I’m bored to tears of having to fight just to preserve some semblance of normalcy.

[Sigridur Gudmunds @SiggaMex]

On point.

[John Spencer @SpencerGuard]

This should be pushed far and wide. Watched in every college class in the U.S. Thank you @billmaher The moral confusion is gross. "It is not a genocide, it is a counterattack in a war...Gaza equals genocide is a lie, an easily provable lie (as I have argued from first hand observations in Gaza). The fact that so many democrats go along with it is to me the party's worse moment since they undid reconstruction after the civil war...words have meaning...genocide, kill or try to kill an entire people, you can't just change the definition of genocide to mean counterattack in a war where people including civilians die, that's every war..."

[Sigridur Gudmunds @SiggaMex]

@berk_hamstead @wokeandwoofing @cervixen 😂

[Sigridur Gudmunds @SiggaMex]

Shocking?

[Dr Az Maxwell Hakeem @Doctor_Az_]

25 years ago I pointed out the founder of Tavistock GIDS that most of the camp boys and tomboy girls if left alone would just turn out to be gay adults and asked ‘isn’t what you’re doing to them mad??’.
His reply:
“But is it anymore mad than if they were to turn out gay?”
The Tavistock taught that homosexuality was not ‘normal’ and their belief was that it was preferable for a potentially gay child to be ‘transed’ into ‘heterosexuality’ he was vey clear on that.

[Bishop Robert Barron @BishopBarron]

Charlie Kirk died with a microphone in his hand—not a gun, a knife, or a grenade, but an instrument of communication. When we stop believing in the dignity of the human person, violence takes its place. A year later, that is still the wound. May he rest in peace.

[Sigridur Gudmunds @SiggaMex]

I agree.

[Giorgia Meloni @GiorgiaMeloni]

Un anno fa veniva ucciso Charlie Kirk. Aveva appena 31 anni ed era, ancora una volta, in mezzo ai giovani, in un’università, a fare quello che aveva scelto di fare per tutta la sua vita pubblica: confrontarsi, discutere, difendere le proprie idee.

Charlie aveva fatto della fede, della libertà di parola e del confronto la propria cifra. Era un cristiano convinto, un marito, un padre, un ragazzo capace di parlare a una generazione intera senza sottrarsi mai al dibattito, anche con chi la pensava in modo opposto.

È stato assassinato proprio mentre esercitava quella libertà.

A un anno di distanza, il modo migliore per ricordarlo è non lasciare che prevalga l’odio che ha cercato di zittirlo. Continuare a credere che le idee si affrontano con altre idee, che il dissenso non è un nemico da eliminare e che la fede può essere vissuta senza paura e senza vergogna.

Charlie Kirk non c’è più. Ma ciò per cui ha vissuto continua a parlare.
E merita di essere ricordato.

[Sigridur Gudmunds @SiggaMex]

Always wise.

[Bishop Robert Barron @BishopBarron]

My thoughts in commemoration of Charlie Kirk’s life and legacy.

[Sigridur Gudmunds @SiggaMex]

I agree, again.

[Charlie Walsham @CharlieWalsham_]

Modern identity politics turned disagreement into a character defect.

Question critical race theory: racist.

Question gender ideology: transphobe.

Question intersectionality: reactionary.

That’s an extraordinarily effective way of preventing people from asking whether the ideas are actually true.

[Sigridur Gudmunds @SiggaMex]

I agree.

[Charlie Walsham @CharlieWalsham_]

Progressives claim they want to bring us all together in a “kind” and “compassionate “ utopian society.

In reality, they sort people into identities, assign privilege and oppression accordingly, treat dissent as evidence of moral deficiency, and ostracise transgressors.

It’s a divisive and authoritarian movement.

[Sigridur Gudmunds @SiggaMex]

My feelings, exactly.

[Charlie Walsham @CharlieWalsham_]

There is a huge group of people who don’t feel represented by politics any more. Socially liberal. Economically pragmatic. Uninterested in populist theatre and disturbed by vigilantism, but utterly sick of harmful progressive dogma.

They didn’t all suddenly lurch to the right. The political centre simply moved away from them.

[Sigridur Gudmunds @SiggaMex]

@BishopBarron Thank you bishop!

[Sigridur Gudmunds @SiggaMex]

Thank you Bishop!

[Bishop Robert Barron @BishopBarron]

Friends, for the wokeist philosophy that dominates today, empathy—feeling the feelings of the other and not harming those feelings—is treated as a supreme value. But while empathy is perfectly good and decent, the Bible teaches that love, not empathy, is the supreme value. And love does not mean, primarily, feeling the feelings of the other or not hurting those feelings; it means willing the good of the other—and that can be, as Dostoevsky said, “a harsh and dreadful thing.”