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I& #39;m going to talk for a bit about why I care so much about this issue, because I know some of you are sick of it. https://twitter.com/cats_owl/status/1062617344525004800">https://twitter.com/cats_owl/...
I& #39;m opposed to the idea of self-ID on every possible level. It& #39;s against science, it& #39;s against reason, against tolerance, against women.
But those are all intellectual, dispassionate judgements. They& #39;re not the reason I *feel* so deeply about it. The reason is lesbians.
For the whole first decade of this century, my social circle was about 90% lesbian. I fell into a little crowd by accident.
And soon, we were all out three or four nights a week in a bunch of pubs with names like "Does Your Mother Know?"
Most of them are now closed - the era of Bath supporting four or five gay bars seems to have passed, although the one we always...
...ended the evening in, Mandalyn& #39;s, is still going strong. It was a fabulous place, in every usage of that word.
Thursdays to Sundays it was absolutely mobbed, with a proprietor who& #39;d come round with a trolley of ridiculous-flavoured £1 vodka shots...
...at random intervals, ringing a little bell. But I digress. Point is, I was knee-deep in lesbians and it was awesome.
I& #39;ve always preferred the company of women ever since I was wee (I was raised in a very female environment, aunties everywhere), and...
...here was a woman-heavy social group with none of the awkwardness that sexual attraction involves. I learned a lot about what women are...
...really like when they& #39;re not moderating their behaviour out of fear of males, and about how they relate to each other, that you just...
...don& #39;t get as a bloke in other circumstances. It was enlightening and occasionally terrifying and mainly a pile of fun. But anyway.
I eventually fell out of the social circle, largely because I got too old (and skint) to keep up the pace of drinking four nights a week.
But I kept some of the friends, and they& #39;re some of my very favourite people - mad and lovely and marginalised in a way even gay men aren& #39;t.
And I can& #39;t begin to tell you, readers, the burning fury I feel when some disgusting little woke prick starts calling my friends bigots...
...for their "genital preferences", and demands that they start accepting penises where they don& #39;t want them. I am unable to detect any...
...meaningful practical difference between that and the old-fashioned vanilla homophobia that I still remember from the 1980s.
How DARE you attack my wonderful, glorious, harassed friends like this? Who the FUCK do you think you are calling them "vagina fetishists"?
How can we possibly have arrived in a place where Pride - PRIDE! - is a hostile environment for lesbians? That it& #39;s a place they can& #39;t...
...feel safe from violent hatred? How can it be that the biggest threat to lesbians is now the LGB establishment meant to protect them?
On top of all the other shit they have to deal with? (I kinda have some sense of how that feels as an indy campaigner who& #39;s been under...
...increasingly vicious attack from elements of the Yes movement in recent years, I guess.)
So there it is. If you hate me going on about this stuff - and I do know I& #39;m doing it - that& #39;s why it& #39;s in my heart as well as my head.
And that& #39;s why I& #39;m afraid I& #39;m not going to stop until this madness ends. Leave my fucking friends alone, you despicable arseholes.
I want no part of a Scotland where facts and words and science count for nothing, but more to the point, where my pals don& #39;t matter.
And fuck every idiot in the SNP, all the way to the top, who are making me feel this way 
https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="🙁" title="Slightly frowning face" aria-label="Emoji: Slightly frowning face">https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="😡" title="Pouting face" aria-label="Emoji: Pouting face">https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="🔥" title="Fire" aria-label="Emoji: Fire">
PS Mandy& #39;s got so busy at weekends they issued special cards to regulars for priority entry. Kept a couple of mine as fond mementos.
