Culture

Questioning gender fluidity is the new blasphemy

The capitulation of the establishment to the politics of transgenderism has been astonishing. I’m struggling to remember any other time when a new and contested ideology has been so uncritically embraced by the powers-that-be. We have a Tory government pushing a Gender Recognition Act that would allow anyone to change his or her gender without so much as popping a hormone pill. An established Church which yesterday issued guidelines to its schools encouraging them to let kids ‘explore gender identity’. Police forces exchanging helmets for caps because ‘gender-based headgear’ is disrespectful to trans people. And of course a university system — the nurturer of future leaders — in which women’s

The problem with the Church of England’s gender guidance

There has been an equivocal reaction, wouldn’t you say, to the Church of England’s pronouncement that little boys should be allowed to wear tiaras and high heels at school, while issuing a helpful form to encourage teachers to report transgender bullying; the new rules, it says, are designed to ‘challenge homophobic, biphobic and transphobic bullying’; (the second is new to me). Stonewall – which has changed its remit quite a bit from the old days when it campaigned just for gay rights – has welcomed the move. But as you’d expect, Christian evangelicals have taken a more dusty view. It’s hardly new for the CofE, though. Back in July it

Wild lynx are either dangerous or docile – but we need to decide

It’s interesting that everyone is making such a fuss about this ‘dangerous wild lynx’ that has escaped from a Welsh animal park. Various reports have described it as ‘fearsome’ warning that it ‘could eat pets’ and be ‘aggressive if cornered’. The park itself ­­– Borth Wild Animal Kingdom in Ceredigion – says that: ‘There have never been any recorded attacks of a lynx on a human, but they are a wild animal… and will attack if cornered or trapped. If you spot her, please don’t approach her.’ Animals escape from zoos and wildlife parks all the time. Another lynx, ‘Flaviu’, escaped last summer in similar circumstances from a park in

How tech lobbyists harness the power of grassroots activism

A strange thing happened after TFL’s decision last month not to renew Uber’s license to operate in London. The ride sharing app started a petition on the website change.org. To defend the livelihoods of 40,000 drivers – and the consumer choice of millions of Londoners – sign this petition asking to reverse the decision to ban Uber in London. Thousands of stranded bus-shy Londoners rushed to sign, making it the fastest growing petition in the UK this year. (At the time of writing it’s reached 855 thousand signatures). And of course it was accompanied by the mandatory hashtag #saveyouruber, which was shared by the official Uber UK Twitter account. Big

Ed West

The wisdom of children isn’t all it’s cracked up to be

Here’s an uplifting story from the vanguard of the culture war. As the New York Times reports: ‘At the Advent School in Boston, Erina Spiegelman, who is an instructional coordinator, recalled that a teacher last year asked a group of students the big question: ‘What is gender?’. The first answer came from a second-grader: ‘It’s a thing people invented to put you in a category.” I have a daughter that age (second grade is the equivalent of Year 3) and I love her as much as any human has loved another, but she’s not an evolutionary biologist, and for me to present her very vague understanding of such a fraught, difficult

How I fell under the spell of Soviet propaganda posters

It’s hard to admire communist art with an entirely clear conscience. The centenary of the October revolution, which falls this month, marks a national calamity whose casualties are still being counted. When my father-in-law comes to visit, I have to hide my modest collection of Russian propaganda: he grew up under the Soviets and has few fond memories of the experience. He can’t work out why old agitprop is so popular today. But the simple fact is, for all the disaster they wrought, the Bolsheviks did leave a legacy of images so striking that, even now, they can draw thousands into a museum. As Tate Modern is about to demonstrate.

Political meddling is putting universities’ independence at risk

If I was the vice-chancellor of Oxford, I’d be thinking about an urgent fundraising campaign that would allow the university to go private. Chris Heaton-Harris’s letter yesterday was dumb. A request for information on who lectures about Brexit and for links to their lecture materials made on House of Commons letterhead was bound to look intimidating. But David Lammy’s letter to Oxford, co-signed by the shadow Education Secretary and the Tory chair of the Education Select Committee, is even more of an assault on university independence. Lammy not only wants Oxford to do more to fix the deficiencies of the school system but also to move to ‘centralised admissions’. Such a

Nick Cohen

Freedom of speech and Russia Today

Russia does much worse than suppressing dissident opinion and manufacturing fake news. Putin has aided and abetted the vast crimes against humanity in Syria. The terror sent refugees flooding into the EU, and their presence helped produce Brexit and the rise of a pan-European far right: a double victory for the Kremlin, when you look at how ‘patriotic’ parties put Russia’s interests before their countries’ interests from France to the Balkans. Sanctions and the vast corruption Putin organises and profits from has produced vast poverty. It’s to be expected but should not be forgotten. Also worth recalling are the murders of opponents, the harassment of opposition parties, the anti-gay laws,

The word ‘woman’ is being erased from public life

If someone had told you 10 years ago that it would soon become tantamount to a speechcrime to say ‘Men cannot get pregnant’, you would have thought them mad. That would be like punishing someone for saying, ‘Humans need oxygen to survive’. And yet here we are, in 2017, where PC has spun so violently out of control, and the cult of gender-neutrality has become so unwieldy, that one of the most controversial things you can say these days is: ‘Only women can get pregnant.’ Apparently that’s offensive to transmen (women who identify as men). ‘Men can get pregnant, too’, trans activists cry. Which strikes me as a real-life version

What if someone takes the kisses at the end of my emails seriously?

Very good piece from Giles Coren (as usual) on the intrusive and aggressive act of putting ‘xx’ at the end of emails. I had been thinking pretty much the same thing. I suppose one could quote Derrida and the structuralists and insist that there is no one-to-one relationship between the signifier (the ‘xx’) and the thing signified (putting your tongue halfway down some babe’s throat). There certainly isn’t when I do it. But there’s the fear. What if the recipient isn’t a structuralist? Incidentally, if you want to see where we are right now with this issue, just read the comments from Caroline Kirkpatrick.

It is unfair to blame Oxford for the low number of black undergraduates

David Lammy has been making headlines today, accusing Oxford of ‘social apartheid’ because it offers so few places to black British students. This claim is based on an FOI request Lammy submitted to the university asking how many black British A-level students each college has offered places to in the last six years. The most eye-catching statistic is that 10 out of 32 Oxford colleges did not offer a place to a single black British pupil with A-levels in 2015 and Oriel College has only offered one place to a black British A-level student since 2010. There is no doubt that Oxford does admit too few black British students, but

Academic freedom is now being betrayed by academics

The ultimate purpose of a university is, without fear or favour, to pursue the truth, and in furtherance of that ideal I try, as an historian, to go wherever the evidence leads me. That some folks – even some academic colleagues – may not feel comfortable with the end results is of absolutely no consequence. I’ve always been supported by the institutions at which I’ve worked and by the colleagues with whom I work with.  But it’s now becoming clear to me that this world and these norms are under attack, and – scarcely less worrying – that they are being betrayed from within. Consider the following two stories that

The #MeToo movement reveals feminism’s obsession with victimhood

Following a weekend crammed with ever more salacious revelations about Harvey Weinstein, hundreds of thousands of women have now taken to social media to share their own experiences of sexual harassment. This is called the ‘#MeToo’ movement, and it’s gone viral, in the way that these things do. According to Twitter, this reveals ‘the magnitude of sexual assault’. In reality, it does nothing of the sort. #MeToo tells us far more about the desire of some women to reach for victimhood status. The accusations against Weinstein include charges of rape; as such, they deserve to be taken seriously and tried in courts of law rather than by public opinion. At

James Kirkup

Misogynists can’t decide: are Weinstein’s accusers weak subhumans or devious slags?

The volley of accusations against Harvey Weinstein has been extraordinary – and, to some, suspicious. Why keep silent after so many years? If an actress says that he raped her, why did she agree to go for lunch afterwards? The Spectator, in keeping with its tradition of saying things you’re unlikely to read elsewhere, has published some of these more controversial points. Gwyneth Paltrow says she was sexually harassed by Weinstein when she was 22, says Toby Young. He continues: Why, then, did she thank him three years later when she won an Oscar for her performance in Shakespeare in Love?” The same goes for Angelina Jolie and all the other

The Weinstein affair has exposed Hollywood’s culture. Let’s boycott it

Oh, the glorious hypocrisy of it all – the dozens of actresses, UN goodwill ambassadors among them, who have come forward to make accusations against Harvey Weinstein – and yet whom said not a word between them when they were on the make and he was in a position to help them with their careers. I should say that if you are important and mature enough to serve as a UN ambassador you ought to be brave enough to report wrongdoing that is going on beneath your nose – and not wait until there is a bandwagon on which to leap. Worse, it turns out that in 2009 some of

Why is England’s football team so unexciting?

During a riveting session at the Cheltenham Literary Festival with sporting brainboxes Mike Brearley and Matthew Syed, discussion touched on the Ringelmann effect. This is the tendency for members of a group to perform less well together than individually. Old Ringelmann observed it in tug-of-war in the early 20th century. On their own the athletes pulled a big weight. In a team they grunted, grimaced but didn’t pull so much. They were skiving; sheltering behind teammates. You can bet Ringelmann would be rubbing his hands over the state of the England football team. After a seemingly interminable World Cup qualifying campaign full of the dreariest football imaginable, England flopped across

Donald Trump is right to ditch Unesco

Donald Trump and the United Nations don’t appear to have much in common. Trump is loud, angry, insular, lumpen and uncultured. The UN is caring, sharing, virtuous, and busy saving the world from war, famine and disease. But they do share something important: they are both worms in an apple. Trump is a statist hollowing out a conservative movement and a nativist who made it to the top of a nation of immigrants. The UN, founded on horror and hope after World War II, was supposed to uphold international norms and universal rights. It was an idealist’s dream. Yet that mission has been debased by a General Assembly packed with member

Ireland’s abortion debate will be next year’s big culture war

If you’re fed up with endless bickering over Brexit, spare a thought for the citizens of Ireland. The government here recently announced plans for a new referendum on abortion, currently prohibited by the Constitution with a few limited exceptions. So the starting pistol has been fired on what is sure to be twelve months of hyperventilating hipsters, jangling rosary beads and a stampede from both the pro-choice and pro-life lobbies towards the moral high ground. The majority of the population – broadly in favour of a liberalisation of the law but against abortion in all circumstances – is already donning figurative hard hats and bracing for the worst. The vote is

The left’s love for protest doesn’t apply to the issue of abortion

Funny, but I had picked up the idea, especially over the past year or two, that the Left was rather fond of the concept of street protest. Every time I am in Central London I seem to run into hordes of placard-holders protesting against ‘austerity’, student tuition fees, animal rights, save the NHS, war in Syria, Universal Credit and what have you. While I might disagree it has never occurred to me to try to challenge the right of these people to take to streets to make their views known. I just hope they have a good day out. But there are limits, it seems, to the Left’s enthusiasm for

The Football Lads Alliance is a working-class movement – and the political class wants to ignore it

Politicians are always going on about ‘the voiceless’. By which they usually mean poor and working-class people. People who have been shunted from public life and never get to air their concerns. At the Conservative party conference Theresa May styled herself ‘voice of the voiceless’ (before, too ironically, becoming voiceless herself). Impeccably bred Corbynistas, all bleeding-heart ABC1s, dream of giving a leg-up to the little people and having more working-class voices in politics. Which makes it odd, then, that on Saturday, London hosted one of the largest working-class demonstrations of recent years and these weepers for the voiceless said nothing. Nada. Zilch. Ah, but these were the wrong kind of