Melissa Martin

@sarahrutherfor2 @AmnestyUK She takes no prisoners. Thank goodness.

@AmnestyUK Be afraid. Be very afraid.

@mart_brooks @QcWynter We had the best TV.

@QcWynter Black Beauty At All? Amazing theme tune "Galloping home". HORSEEEEY! TRA-LA-LA-LA-LA HORSEEEY! TRA-LA-LA-LA-LA HORSEY-HORSE HORSE-HORSE-HORSE... youtube.com/watch?v=8u5NgC…

Two of my favourite programmes when I was a teen were Little House on the Prairie & The Waltons ("G'night, John Boy"), both bastions of what some now describe as "cisheteronormativity". Little House has been redone by Netflix. How will they twist it? Do I dare watch to find out?

@salltweets A NSW government spokesperson said “it’s just common sense that a legal category consisting of both sexes & both gender expressions represents one sex & one gender expression. Besides, everyone else is doing it so it can’t be barking mad.”

It’s pretty funny that the data collection around lying about your sex on your birth certificate is biological sex based. There is no escaping the reality that the men claiming to be women are men.

@ThePosieParker Thats her younger child. A daughter.

She trooned her son. Grotesque child abuse.

@JournalismSEEN @antoniafrances The only possible rationale is to misinform the uninformed. Why are you doing that @BBC?

@antoniafrances They have changed it since we originally posted it.

No pronouns used at all here for Heather Herbert in this BBC report about his arrest. bbc.co.uk/news/articles/…

@Gaynotqueer1 😆 I think more barrels will be scraped before this is over.

🙄

@MikeBales We did!

That’s a fact 🎯💥

@Violet2b_ A subset of men have always enjoyed transgressing female boundaries. We will deal with you as we always have. Sometimes a blind eye will be turned in, say, a nightclub. Raise hell if we see you in the Ladies in the park.

The government targeting trans people, A very small minority in the UK needs to seriously be studied, This is both unnecessary and discriminatory. Trans people should be able to use whatever toilet they are most comfortable with and I won't hear otherwise.

@RedTory2016 Yup.

I do get that this woman is locked in grief. But seriously? It isn’t hate speech. Not even close. Helen Joyce was right to say these people are locked into trunery forever. Because otherwise they would have to face the truth about their own actions.

@Heccles94 What is the common denominator? What had they become?

TERFs are trying to rid the world of some of the most important and harmless organisations in the world: Park Run Girl guides Amnesty international It’s not normal behaviour.

@Trueinclusion @willows_elise Irrespective of his respect or lack of respect it destroyed the categories. Thats ineluctable.

@willows_elise He’s right it doesn’t make sense. It was a polite fiction we went along with until it became clear how little respect or care he has for women.

Doesn’t need to be worked out your sex is male not female.

@willows_elise Easy, Steph. I too will be registered as certificated female which just like certificated male means biological sex unknown, gender expression unknown. Homonyms are not synonyms.

@runthinkwrite Absolutely. I’m waiting to see what the evidence is. God knows whats on his hard drive.

Unless there's something we don't know about, it seems to me to be deeply wrong to charge Heather Herbert with breaking the law. Herbert's words were stupid and vile, and suggest that Herbert is a stupid and vile person. But that's not against the law.

@zaelefty @MorphoTime @joerogan He’s not too bright. I like that in a man.

A biological anthropologist @MorphoTime just claimed on @joerogan that human sex change is possible because of a disorder where "females turn into males at puberty." He makes 7 false claims. Let's break it down. 1. He first claims, "We all start out as females." No, we all start genetically sexed and physically undifferentiated, with bipotential gonads, the primordial genital ducts for both sexes, and a cloaca (Wolpert et al, 2019). Note these are not female gonads or genitalia. Around the 6th week, genetics differentiate our neutral gonads into testes OR ovaries, and then genetics and hormonal signaling from the gonad eliminates one duct and builds the other one. Thus, sex development begins physically neutral and diverges down EITHER the male OR female path due to genetics (Rey et al. 2020). 2. He claims "A population on a pacific island grow up as female until puberty transforms some of them into males." Certain isolated island communities have high rates of what's called 5-alpha reductase deficiency (5-ARD), a MALE ONLY disorder of sex development that causes a male fetus (with testes) to not produce enough DHT, the hormone required for the development of the male's penis, scrotum, and testicular descent (Kumar et al, 2022). At puberty, the surge of testosterone FROM THEIR TESTES causes masculinization of their external genitalia and body, with some descent of the testes and development of the penis and scrotum. These males were NEVER females. They are born as males WITH TESTES with underdeveloped external genitals. 3. He claims, "The population is insensitive to DHT." No, those with the disorder have an enzyme deficiency, where they cannot PRODUCE enough of the enzyme to convert testosterone into DHT. Their bodies can respond to DHT normally. It's that they cannot produce enough of it to guide the external genital development of the male fetus (Kang et al. 2014). 4. He claims, "Their ovaries descend and become testes at puberty." No, they never had ovaries. Like all other males, males with 5-ARD have the SRY gene. This triggers their bipotential gonads to differentiate into testes (Kashimada & Koopman, 2010). This does not happen during puberty. This happens at 6 weeks gestation. Just because their testes may not descend does not make them ovaries. 5. He claims, it's called "pseudohermaphroditism." No, it's called 5-alpha reductase deficiency. Medicine has abandoned the use of the term pseudohermaphroditism since early 2000s because it obscures the actual reality of these rare conditions, and is "scientifically specious and clinically problematic" (Dreger et al. 2005). 6. He claims, "They turn into the opposite sex." No, they start out in utero as males and remain as males for life. Just because they were not able to fully develop their external genitals does not make them females. They are males with testes who could not fully develop the penis and scrotum due to lack of DHT. Humans cannot change sex. We are gonochoric--a species whose individuals are male or female for life, determined by their genetics (Holub & Shackelford.) 7. He claims, "It doesn't do anything. Natural selection wouldn't select against it. It's just weird." No, the disorder causes many issues with male fertility. First, low DHT can impair the growth and differentiation of sperm cells and the growth of the prostate, causing them to have a prostate that is 1/10th the healthy size. Small prostates mean that semen volumes are low, harming sperm transport and motility. Second, undescended testes can also disrupt the careful balance of temperature for sperm creation (Kang, Imperato-McGinley, Zhu, & Rosenwaks, 2014). Parroting false claims about these rare disorders like 5-ARD hurts the public's understanding of these conditions, makes people believe falsehoods about human biology, and can harm the evidence-based treatment of the individuals who have these disorders. Scientific sources for further reading: Wolpert, L., Tickle, C., & Martinez Arias, A. (2019). Principles of Development (6th ed.). Oxford University Press. Rey, R., Josso, N., Racine, C. (2020). Sexual differentiation. In: Endotext. South Dartmouth, MDText, Inc. Kumar, G., & Barboza-Meca, J. J. (2022). 5-Alpha-Reductase Deficiency. In StatPearls. StatPearls Publishing. Kang, H., Imperato-McGinley, J., Zhu, Y.-S., & Rosenwaks, Z. (2014). The effect of 5a-reductase-2 deficiency on human fertility. Fertility and Sterility, 101(2), 320–326. Kashimada, K., Koopman, P. (2010). Sry, the master switch in mammalian sex determination. Development, 137. Dreger, A. D., Chase, C., Sousa, A., Gruppuso, P. A., & Frader, J. (2005). Changing the nomenclature/taxonomy for intersex: A scientific and clinical rationale. Journal of Pediatric Endocrinology and Metabolism, 18(8), 729–733. Holub, A., Shackelford, T. (2021). Gonochorism. Encyclopedia of Animal Cognition and Behavior. Springer.

@andyburnham @adamboultonTABB Puerile. I hope this isn’t typical of you.

The next few days are about more than changing who governs Britain. They’re about changing how Britain is governed.

@thelefttake Why?

I think if your views have you funding legal cases against Amnesty International then it’s time for you to reflect on whether or not your views are conducive to the betterment of society.

@damekatydenise_ @latsot Have you ever noticed, Dame Katy, that Jesus is always portrayed as a looker? Whats that about, do you think?

Been thinking about the Aberdeen one, Heather Herbert, all night. This is the Terry Waite saga all over again. I’ve designed this commemorative plate to raise vital funds for Heather & myself. Priced just £69.99, with free stand & certificate of authenticity. Coming soon. #WeAreAllHeatherHerbert 🕯️ #TransWomenAreWomen #BeKind

@JournalistJill He’s not too bright. I like that in a man.

Jukes tried this ‘guilt by association’ move on me once as we engaged on X as well. When he couldn’t make his feeble point about men in women’s spaces stand up, he went looking for GC accounts who had used words like ‘groomer’, screenshot them and asked: ‘How can you associate yourself with this?’ It’s a manoeuvre even a sixth form debating society would shun. Note how the one tweet he uses to smear @bindelj has no mention of the two things he’s accusing her of. Then he turns off replies. Pathetic.

@CarrieColtrain @jk_rowling @thetimes You are correctly identifying the ruthlessness of maternal instinct. It takes no prisoners.

@jk_rowling @thetimes Going to try to destroy Amnesty International now, Killiechassie Karen? Stop and look at yourself for goodness sake. God help anyone that crosses you, you haven't a shred of empathy left in you.

Amnesty UK was already smearing feminists as 'anti-rights' back in May, according to @thetimes. It appears that, far from being an accidental slip up or an editorial error, the latest defamatory report accurately represents Amnesty UK's deep-seated hostility to all organisations that believe sex is real and important in contexts such as same sex attraction and healing after sexual violence and trauma. Those who've been defamed are owed an explanation of why Amnesty claimed to have withdrawn the report because of its 'language' when, per @thetimes article, it had already expressed exactly the same beliefs, in the same language, months previously. Many of the organisations Amnesty has attacked are grassroots campaigners with a tiny fraction of a gigantic, well-funded international NGO's resources. The defamatory report has already had serious consequences for a service supporting women at the most vulnerable time of their lives, as detailed by Beira's Place lawyers in the legal letter sent two days ago. The withdrawing of the report cannot undo the harm it has already done and is continuing to do. If Amnesty is under the illusion that the women's, children's and gay rights organisations it has attacked will be unwilling to go to court, they have made yet another massive error of judgement. They underestimate both the solidarity that exists between the targeted organisations and my willingness to support legal action, not just on behalf of Beira's Place, but for all women's and LGB organisations falsely branded 'anti-rights.'

@WTSmith17 You’ll be a brilliant Dad. ❤️

My son was born on Sunday. Sorry I’ve been so busy, but I’ll be back soon. This adventure has been worth every minute of it. Thank you all for making it possible.