Lifted from the comments, via pst314:

Ms Watson, now not so young herself, tells us,

The specifics of this pressure, allegedly pervasive, overpowering and entirely social in nature, are unclear. No examples are forthcoming. The physical realities of reproduction are, however, less mysterious.

The idea that Ms Watson, or likely anyone she knows, any of her multi-millionaire celebrity peers, is being pressured by others, by a brutal society, to get married and presumably have children – and that such hypothetical pressure constitutes “violence” – is, shall we say, difficult to believe.

It seems rather more likely that Ms Watson, 35, is, like many of her self-involved peers, struggling to process her own age-related anxieties. At 35, that fertility window is closing quite rapidly and options that have perhaps been taken for granted, or deferred as insufficiently fashionable, will soon expire.

As someone quips in reply,

Update, via the comments:

EmC adds,

Well, quite. I don’t follow these things closely, but my impression is that there’s a class dynamic in play. That, for some, getting married and having children during the window of optimal viability is now considered low-status, proletarian, somewhat déclassé, especially among women with progressive leanings.

As if this time were obviously better spent pursuing a statusful career and asserting some womanly empowerment, or, in Ms Watson’s case, indulging in activism of a faintly ludicrous kind, claiming to be “self-partnered” rather than single, and insisting that bewigged men are somehow women.

My impression of any social pressure, any class convention, is that it goes in a different direction to the one being claimed. At least among ladies of Ms Watson’s political persuasion. Readers may wish to speculate as to whether childlessness and middle-aged regret will also, in short order, be deemed “violence” and something to complain about during celebrity interviews.

And for some reason, this came to mind:

Something about the dynamic, perhaps.

Intimate moment detected. || Danger zone. || So how was your day? || Shower scenes. || We’ll never know if he escaped. || Almost ripe. || The mist would help no end. || An average of 29. || Crunchy ant cheese. You heard me. || Modernity, baby. || Our betters smile. || He “took some weed pills.” Also, he was “bored” and he “hates cops.” || Plot twist. Related. || Autumnal recording project. || “When a troubled teen’s crimes spiral into murder, a desperate plastic surgery scheme unleashes chaos.” || I’m not quite sure they’ve captured her. || Hard to tell who’s winning. || Nommy-nommy-nom. || Australia’s uranium rush, 1964. || Rubby the robot. || Rage. || Today’s word is pre-emptive. || The progressive trajectory. || Progressive policing. || Funereal cones. || And finally, for fans of the fiddlesome.

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Some items from the archives. A Cross-Dressing Special.

His Tiny, Delicate Hands.

The erotic adventures of a strapping madam.

The Pretending Can Get Competitive.

He identifies as a disabled woman. It’s activism, apparently.

There’s Something To Be Said For Inhibition.

Look away now.

This Is Your Captain Speaking.

Argentina’s first transgender pilot uses cockpit to take endless pouting selfies.

For those craving more, this is a pretty good place to start.

Update, via the comments, which you’re reading, of course:

Regarding Mr Yates, our strapping madam with an interest in schoolgirls’ panties, Tanner asks,

Good question. I’d imagine the adults, largely progressive women, had learned to suppress their instincts and to ignore the evidence of their own eyes, over and over again. Because that’s where the in-group status is. Ideological capture can have a powerful grip, on people of a certain type. As illustrated by the fact that the above wasn’t some weird one-off aberration occurring out of the blue. It was a pattern of behaviour.

But such is progressive piety. It’s a learned unrealism. A world of pretending.

And so, our progressive ladies chose to applaud and encourage Mr Yates, to affirm and embolden him, very publicly, despite his repeated, utterly creepy transgressions. For which, any non-cross-dressing member of staff would have faced immediate dismissal and most likely a visit from the police. And they did this while disdaining the girls who complained about his behaviour, for daring to notice What Must Not Be Noticed.

This was not some mistake, some error of judgement. It was pathology. It tells us something quite important, and quite fundamental, about the psychology of progressivism.

If another illustration is needed, this time featuring an ostentatiously progressive man, see this eye-widening interview. Readers will note how the chap’s attempts at mental sophistication, his evasions and contrivances, almost always point away from reality. Once you start parsing the assumptions, teasing apart the mindset, the pathology becomes hard to miss. It’s not just a matter of making a mistake.

Consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.

In discussions of Net Zero, I’ve previously mentioned the pleasingly hard-nosed energy analyst Kathryn Porter.

Here she is being interviewed by the chaps at Triggernometry:

This Isn’t Science, It’s Ideology – Kathryn Porter

Watch the full episode with @KathrynPorter26, right here on X. pic.twitter.com/SLQB9l9Evb

— TRIGGERnometry (@triggerpod) September 28, 2025

It’s ninety minutes, but time well spent and dense with information. Much of it of an eye-widening kind.

Ms Porter’s YouTube channel can be found here.

I paraphrase, of course. Though not, I think, wildly:

Sorry, still pondering the Swissness of wind instrument repairman.

Well, he’s not wrong. We could, I suppose, list things like pelvis shape, skull shape, bone density, Q-angles and whatnot, and we could mention the very high accuracy of sex determination via forensic examinations based on such variables, but it all seems rather obvious. Almost too silly.

But wait.

Because in the realm of the trans activist, and others who like to pretend things, in this case, two journalists and a teacher, the accumulation of ludicrousness must not be impeded.

And so,

A transcript of the interrogation, in German, can be found here.

It turns out that noticing the obvious – that sexual dysmorphia is a mental health issue, that the skeletons of men and women are quite distinct, and that some members of the so-called “LGBTQI community” are quite extreme in their ambitions, as illustrated by the case itself – has now been deemed taboo, and indeed punishable:

Don’t talk back, citizen. Cross-dressing men are women.

With magic woman bones.

Readers will note the bizarre and emphatic conflation, by Judge Julia Schär, of sexual orientation and sexual dysmorphia – her equating of homosexuality with intolerant transvestism – via which she condemned Mr Brünisholz for an alleged intent to “disparage people on the basis of their sexual orientation in a way that violates human dignity.”

Whether the farce described above does much for human dignity is a question I leave to the reader.

Well, quite.

A reminder, were one needed, that when you surrender to the lie, all manner of distortions will ensue. Best, I think, not to give away the store in the first place.

Oh, and because I know you like a punchline:

Modernity, baby. Bathe in its glow.

Update, via the comments:

Readers with a taste for inadvertent surrealism and colourful epithets – and claims that skeletal analysis is unreliable and irrelevant because “our species isn’t very sexually dimorphic” – may find amusement of a sort over in this related Reddit thread.

There, some commenters, presumably ‘allies’ or themselves trans-identified, denounce the post above and what they consider to be “obsessing over transgenderism,” which seems to mean expressing any reservation or insufficiently flattering thought, “because it literally doesn’t impact your life.”

As if, for instance, women could have no reason to express reservations, and all while commenting on a news item with rather ominous implications, and in which someone’s life was obviously impacted.

As sH2 quips in reply,

Well, indeed. There is, after all, the small matter of probity.

And the implication of such statements, commonplace among trans activists, is that despite the current ubiquity in the media of trans-related issues, and despite efforts to change laws and social norms in ways that create any number of serious problems, and despite the alarming comorbidities of sexual dysmorphia, and despite the eye-widening prevalence of sex offending among the trans-identified… despite all of that, the rest of us should say nothing.

Instead, we’re expected to quietly acquiesce.

Big ask.