Janice Turner gives us some background:

hen Thibaut Rey was radioed by a colleague to say a man in the cosmetics department was behaving suspiciously, he went to the CCTV room to watch. It was late summer in Provence, so many women browsing the E.Leclerc hypermarket were bare-legged. Walking among them a man was carefully positioning a cool box beneath their skirts. Out of it poked a mobile phone.

The man, in his sixties, was deftly moving from woman to unwitting woman, and Rey, a security guard, was incensed. He ran on to the shop floor and grabbed the man’s arm. “You are a disgusting person,” he said. “I swear if she was my mother, I’d rip your head off.” One woman shrugged: she needed to finish her shopping. But Rey implored another to press charges and called the police.

Rey didn’t see the man’s snaps as a bit of fun. He thought of his responsibility for women’s safety and did his job. When police officers arrived they didn’t just reprimand this dirty-minded pensioner (as Paris cops had when they caught him in 2010) they scrolled through his phone, then went to his home and seized his computer. They too did their jobs. Because of Rey, who will now receive the Légion d’honneur, Dominique Pelicot was caught and he, along with 50 of the rapists he recruited to violate his wife, Gisèle, was brought to justice.

And because of all that we now know even more about the infinite contempt some men have for women.

Because it’s not just for sexy fun, now is it. If it were, you would only need the one, and you could get it much more easily than by prowling department stores to upskirt women. No: the force, the lack of consent, the insult, the creeping, the prying, the deception, the sneaking are what make it fun. Same with the drugging-to-rape.

This act of diligence by a decent man was pivotal. Yet so too was an act of dereliction by a careless woman in a key British case. Called to a drive-through McDonald’s in Swanley, Kent, where a man had exposed himself to female staff, PC Samantha Lee was handed CCTV footage, a car registration and credit card receipts. But shoving these in her pocket, Lee — who sold semi-clad selfies on the OnlyFans website as “Officer Naughty” — did not inquire further. Three days later that man, Wayne Couzens, killed Sarah Everard.

I wonder how Officer Naughty is doing now.

And anyone wondering if British men would participate in a degrading mass sexual encounter should consider the queue in the London Airbnb rented by an OnlyFans performer, Lily Phillips, in her quest to have sex with 100 men. Phillips was of course, unlike Gisèle Pelicot, fully consenting, although the stunt left her shaken and crying. But these men were waiting for a designated five minutes’ joyless, mechanical grind on a bed strewn with used condoms. What drew both groups of men to such depravity? The answer, no surprise, is online porn.

Plus deep-seated hatred of women.

Why does Musk have so much power over the government and how can it be taken away?

…the billionaire tanked a bipartisan spending deal in the House last week and sent lawmakers scrambling.

Musk torched the plan to his 200 million followers on X, the social media platform he owns, and President-elect Donald Trump called on Republicans to reject the deal.

That’s part of the answer – he owns TwitterX and he abuses the power that gives him.

Musk was one of Trump’s biggest benefactors on the campaign trail and has been attached to the president-elect since his victory — weighing in on Cabinet appointments, meeting with foreign leaders and, increasingly, swaying dealmaking in Congress.

And that’s another part. Trump is stupid and weak, and Musk abuses the power that gives him.

But Musk’s ill-defined role raises questions about the unchecked influence of billionaires. He was not elected by voters or given a role in the new administration that’s subject to ethics rules or congressional oversight. And he’s vowed to fund primary challengers for lawmakers who don’t fall in line.

It’s not so much an ill-defined role as not a role at all. He’s just doing what he can get away with, and what he can get away with appears to be unlimited.

More bullying:

Trump has demanded Panama reduce fees on the Panama Canal or return it to US control, accusing the central American country of charging “exorbitant prices” to American shipping and naval vessels.

“The fees being charged by Panama are ridiculous, highly unfair,” he told a crowd of supporters in Arizona on Sunday. “This complete rip-off of our country will immediately stop,” he said, referring to when he takes office next month.

His remarks prompted a quick rebuke from Panama’s president, who said “every square metre” of the canal and surrounding area belong to his country.

Also, and more frivolously, Trump is a funny guy to complain about rip-offs, given all the gilded trash with his name on it he markets.

The 51-mile (82km) Panama Canal cuts across the central American nation and is the main link between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Up to 14,000 ships travel through it each year, including container ships carrying cars, natural gas and other goods, and military vessels.

It was built in the early 1900s. The US maintained control over the canal zone until 1977, when treaties gradually ceded the land back to Panama. After a period of joint control, Panama took sole control in 1999. The US reserved the right to use military force in defence of the canal against any threat to its neutrality – a threat which now appears to be coming from the US itself.

So that’s cool: we won’t have to spend any money defending the canal.

The neutrality treaty guarantees fair access for all nations and non-discriminatory tolls. Different shipping companies do pay different amounts for passing through the canal – but this depends on the size of the ship and the load on board, not on the country of origin.

Canal transit costs have increased over the past year due to a historic drought, according to analysis by leading shipping industry website Lloyd’s List. Some 75% of the cargo passing through the waterway in the latest fiscal year was either destined for or originated from the US, according to the Panama Canal Authority.

However, the users of the canal are ship operators and owners, not countries themselves.

Well yeah but some of those operators and owners are USAians so we gotta fight.

Nicola Sturgeon throws mud in the general direction of feminist women yet again.

The Herald tells us:

Ms Sturgeon’s comments last week came during interviews marking the tenth anniversary of Scotland’s equal marriage laws.

The ex-SNP leader told Diva magazine: “I’ve had more abuse hurled at me on the issue of trans rights than I have on probably any other issue in my career and I am a politician who helped lead an independence referendum.

“There are people who have muscled their way into that debate no doubt because they are transphobic but also because they want to push back rights generally. I do think that we need to be very vigilant about that as well.”

Separately, in the Guardian, she said the debate around the Gender Recognition Reform Bill “became so toxic, and opposition became so entrenched and – this is not the case for everybody who opposed that legislation – but there were forces that muscled into that debate who, I think, you know, had a bigger agenda in terms of rights more generally.”

Charming, isn’t it? Feminist women are “muscling in” when we object to heads of state blithely driving a tractor through our rights. We’re muscling in, we’re phobic, we want to push back rights generally.

Please, tell us more about how “toxic” we are.

Susan Smith, Co-Director of For Women Scotland told The Herald: “No doubt, Ms Sturgeon would prefer to believe she was thwarted by well-funded ‘shadowy forces’ rather than determined ordinary women risking their all, but her words have the potential to do a good deal of reputational damage to groups like FWS.

“If Ms Sturgeon has any decency or honesty, she will spell out what she means. If she has any introspection, she should acknowledge that her own hubris also played a part.”

Spoiler: she has acknowledged nothing.

Maryam Namazie has a statement at Ex-Muslims International:

At least five people, including a child, were killed, and 200 others were injured when Taleb Al Abdulmohsen deliberately drove into the Magdeburg Christmas Market on December 20. Abdulmohsen, a Saudi-born doctor and self-proclaimed ex-Muslim atheist activist, starkly illustrates that right-wing extremism knows no racial, cultural, or religious boundaries. Despite being an immigrant, he was an outspoken supporter of the far-right AfD, harboring vehemently anti-Muslim and anti-migrant views. His attack was reportedly motivated by anger at Germany’s acceptance of Muslim refugees.

Abdulmohsen was known to our coalition as a stalker and cyberbully, which underscores his commitment to division and dehumanization. His actions serve as a reminder that hate cuts across backgrounds, fueled by an ideology of exclusion and contempt for others.

The Ex-Muslim Coalition condemns this heinous act of violence and offers heartfelt condolences to the families of the victims. We stand resolutely against hatred and division, affirming our unwavering commitment to human rights, including immigrant rights, and the shared humanity that unites us all.

Ahhh sweet.

The mills of God grind slowly but they grind exceeding fine.

Victorian opposition to vote on John Pesutto’s future as leader

Victorian opposition leader John Pesutto will face a leadership spill against him on Friday after a group of Liberals called a special party meeting. 

Victorian Opposition Leader John Pesutto is set to face a leadership challenge this Friday after a group of shadow ministers called a special meeting of the Liberal party room.

The meeting will formally debate readmitting exiled MP Moira Deeming back into the Victorian Liberal Party team, just a week after a near-identical motion failed due to a 14-all votes deadlock.

MP Moira Deeming was exiled because she knows a man is not a woman.

Under immense pressure, Mr Pesutto on Sunday called a party room meeting for January 15 to readmit Ms Deeming, marking a major backflip for the embattled leader.

So sad when all he did was punish a woman for knowing which sex is which.

Earlier on Sunday, Mr Pesutto publicly apologised to Ms Deeming in a statement announcing the meeting originally scheduled for January 15.

“I have today called a special Liberal Party Room meeting for Wednesday 15th January 2025 at 10am to discuss and vote on a motion moved by me to readmit Mrs Moira Deeming to the Parliamentary Liberal Party,” Mr Pesutto said in a statement on Sunday afternoon.

“Since last Friday’s meeting it has become clear that there is now a definite absolute majority of my colleagues who want this issue resolved with her readmission so that we can collectively put this behind us and concentrate on the Prahran and Werribee by-elections and holding the Allan Labor Government to account.”

“I again apologise to Mrs Deeming as we all work together to ensure the Liberal Party succeeds in winning government in November 2026.”

…

The leadership spill is the latest in an ongoing saga that saw Ms Deeming win a defamation case against Mr Pesutto earlier this month.

She alleged he had defamed her as a Nazi sympathiser in the wake of an anti-trans-rights rally on the steps of Victorian parliament last year, which was gatecrashed by neo-Nazis.

In the aftermath of the rally, Mr Pesutto failed in a bid to have Ms Deeming booted from the parliamentary Liberal Party. She was instead suspended for nine months.

Ms Deeming was eventually expelled from the parliamentary party last May, after threatening legal action against Mr Pesutto, but remained a member of the broader Liberal Party.

Federal Court judge David O’Callaghan ruled the opposition leader had defamed Ms Deeming on multiple occasions, including in radio and TV interviews which “caused or is likely to cause serious harm to her reputation”.

All that vindictive malice because a woman knows that men are not women.

Ms Deeming confirmed on Sunday she had found out about the new vote to readmit her to the party room via media reports and that she had not received any personal apology from Mr Pesutto.

Asked by a journalist on Saturday if he was sorry that he had defamed Ms Deeming, Mr Pesutto said: ” I would say to my party room and to Mrs Deeming that I am sorry for the findings the court made but it’s important to move on.”

In other words, no. What a prince.

Trump is throwing his weight around before he’s in the job.

Trump threatened to reassert U.S. control over the Panama Canal, accusing Panama of charging excessive rates to use the Central American passage, which allows ships to cross between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.

Says the guy who bills his own Secret Service agents when they have to stay at his Florida hotel.

The post was an exceedingly rare example of a U.S. leader saying he could push a sovereign country to hand over territory. It also underlines an expected shift in U.S. diplomacy under Trump, who has not historically shied away from threatening allies and using bellicose rhetoric when dealing with counterparts.

Aka picking fights and creating enemies.

“The fees being charged by Panama are ridiculous, especially knowing the extraordinary generosity that has been bestowed to Panama by the U.S.,” Trump wrote in his Truth Social post. “It was not given for the benefit of others, but merely as a token of cooperation with us and Panama. If the principles, both moral and legal, of this magnanimous gesture of giving are not followed, then we will demand that the Panama Canal be returned to us, in full, and without question,” he wrote.

But it’s in Panama. Trump isn’t going to give part of Florida to Panama and Panama isn’t going to give part of Panama to Donald Trump. (It wouldn’t be to the US, it would be to Trump, the person. Everything is personal with him.)

It is not clear how Trump would seek to regain control over the canal, and he would have no recourse under international law if he decided to make a play for the passage.

How about he sends Junior Kennedy on a white horse?

Fancy that, the Independent pointing out that single-sex toilets are important for girls. Mind you, it was more than six years ago.

Unesco is urging governments around the world to prioritise providing single-sex toilets in schools, warning as many as 1 in 10 girls in some countries are missing out on lessons because of their period.

Gee, I wonder why girls would not want to deal with menstruation in a toilet shared with boys.

“In 1990, the world committed to admitting equal numbers of boys and girls into primary school by 2005,” Audrey Azoulay, director-general of Unesco said. “Since then we have set ourselves a more ambitious set of gender equality targets with a deadline of 2030, but we must not forget that, despite considerable progress, one in three countries have yet to achieve the original goal.”

One “obstacle” to girls attending school was a lack of segregated toilets in schools, review director Manos Antoninis said, adding the agency found there was “little focus” on menstrual hygiene in schools in 21 low and middle income countries. “Improved sanitation to address adolescent girls’ concerns over privacy, particularly during menstruation, can influence their education decisions,” he said. “Single-sex toilets are desperately needed to overcome girls’ barriers to education.”

Yes but girls’ access to education doesn’t matter nearly as much as boys’ access to girls in the toilets.

In Bangladesh, 41 per cent of schoolgirls aged between 11 and 17 reported missing three days of school every month because of a lack of adequate sanitary care, according to the report.

Meanwhile, in rural areas of west African nations including Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique, Rwanda, Uganda and Zambia, less than a fifth of schools had four or more of Unesco’s five recommended menstrual hygiene services. These include separate sex toilets with doors and locks, water and rubbish bins.

The issue was not confined to those at secondary school, Unesco said, and primary schools also needed to introduce better toilet facilities to not discourage female pupils.

But but but what about the trans girls? Surely they matter infinitely more than actual girls.

Transgender woman wins court case for transfer to female prison

A transgender woman won a High Court case to be transferred to Northern Ireland’s female prison while being held on charges of threatening to kill her neighbour, it has emerged.

Ah well good to know at least it’s not an alarming type of crime at all.

Michelle James, 63, was moved from Maghaberry Prison to Hydebank Wood on Thursday after taking court proceedings. The move happened after the Department of Justice accepted there was a lack of policy in place for transgender prisoners and consented to the transfer.

Oh great, so there is no policy, so the wise and safe thing to do is to force women to deal with the danger. Thanks, Department of Justice, that’s sweet of you. It’s much better to terrorize and endanger a bunch of women than it is to make one man sad by denying his outrageous demand.

Justice Minister Naomi Long seems to be ok with the decision.

And what the risk assessors come up with is “Sure, put the man in the women’s prison”? Where did they get their training in risk assessment?

It’s so simple.

Ah yes the normal, reasonable, moderate version of thinking men can be women.

Contrary to Wu’s ridiculous “if”, the reality is that JKR has no power to “force” Wu to “live as a man.” Nobody has that power, because the whole idea is meaningless. We don’t “live as” primates or mammals or vertebrates, we just live. We are what we are. Wu is what he is.

It’s not “extreme” to know that men are women, and it’s not extreme to say so. It’s just life. It’s childish to try to force the world at large to play let’s pretend about what sex a man is.

And then of course the punchline where he has the brass neck to hope JKR will go on his “show” – well of course you do, bro, but that’s one of those “would look better on your cv than on mine” items.

Helen has the bit that Pixar took out.

Update: This is a storyboard, not the finished work. I thought the sketchiness was a stylistic choice, derp. H/t Sackbut

Disney decides not to tell children there are people who are the sex they’re not.

Pixar’s original animated series Win or Lose will no longer include a transgender storyline in a later episode, The Hollywood Reporter has learned.

The series follows a co-ed middle school softball team named the Pickles in the week leading up to their championship game. Each of the eight episodes center on the off-the-field life of a character and their point of view, whether it be a player, a parent, a coach or an umpire.

A spokesperson for Disney confirmed that the story arc was removed and provided the following statement to THR: “When it comes to animated content for a younger audience, we recognize that many parents would prefer to discuss certain subjects with their children on their own terms and timeline.”

Gosh, you think? How many parents don’t want Hollywood teaching their children that some lucky kids have Magic Gender?

Disney has continued to feature LGBTQ+ content in its more adult-focused fare, notably Marvel Television’s Agatha All Along, Searchlight Pictures’ All of Us Strangers, Next Goal Wins and Fire Island, and FX’s Pose, among others.

It’s not about “LGBTQ+” content, you buffoons, it’s about the nonsense that is magic gender. Lesbian and gay are not the same thing as magic gender. Use your brain.

Originally a comment by iknklast at Miscellany Room.

The VP said that [Warner Brothers/Discovery] had a duty to “provide a safe space” for trans employees to “live authentically”

This is not a duty of an employer. An employer has a duty to follow proper safety procedures and maintain a safe workspace in the physical sense, and they have a duty not to emotionally abuse employees. There is no duty to provide anyone a space to ‘live authentically’. In fact, most employers don’t do that; they have certain requirements about dress, behavior, language, and what the hell you are to do with your time while you are at work. For a gamer, ‘living authentically’ might involve using the work computers for nothing but gaming all day. For someone who is a slob, it might mean dressing so horribly that the customers complain. My employer had rules for me, and all of us. I could ‘live authentically’ only within those rules, which included not talking politics with my students, though I am a political junkie, and not using bad language, though I do appreciate the ability to swear now and then. (Have you heard of a college that won’t even let the theatre teacher swear? That’s forbidding someone to live authentically, if I may be so bold as to point it out.)

When did bosses get so lily-livered that they allow one group of employees to dictate so much? This isn’t an across the board duty, apparently, since they are not required to give the same allowance for women. I suspect they also wouldn’t be required to allow ‘furries’ to ‘live authentically’ in the office, or ‘trans-babies’. Men who want to be women? Bow down and genuflect to the most marginalized community ever…who manage to be marginalized without having to suffer any actual marginalization.

Fanboy for trans ideology calls someone a “leading feminist” and I ask him what makes someone a “leading feminist.” His reply is that someone else calls her that. Not an answer to the question I asked, bro. I didn’t ask whether other people call her that, I asked what makes someone it. Those are different questions. The difference is significant. It’s a difference that matters. Labels matter; words matter; reasons for saying things matter.

It’s the kind of hackish mushmouth empty verbiage that riddles so much lazy journalism. If you mean famous, say that. If you don’t mean famous, say what you do mean. Aim for specificity. It helps.

Susie Green says she will go right on destroying children’s lives.

An organisation led by the former chief executive of the transgender support charity Mermaids has vowed to keep on helping children get access to puberty blockers, despite a permanent UK ban.

Anne Trans Healthcare, co-founded by the former Mermaids leader Susie Green, hit out at [criticized] Labour after it was announced that the government would keep a ban on the drugs for under-18s.

…

Green, 56, was dismissed as Mermaids’ chief executive in 2022 over a loss of trust in her leadership, a Charity Commission report into the organisation revealed.

The following year she set up Anne Trans Healthcare, which offers access to puberty blockers for under-18s and boasts of having secured a “legal route” to get them to Britons. Anne, of which Green is a director, says on its website that patients can get them prescribed from doctors outside the UK and sent to an “EU destination” for pick-up.

…

Green confirmed to The Times that Anne Trans Healthcare was still “supporting people to access legal routes to gender-affirming healthcare”.

She said: “We will continue to do so despite a UK-wide ban. We do it because to do otherwise would be morally and ethically wrong. The ban is cruel, prejudicial and frankly inhumane.”

Green said she had “seen the positive impact that access to puberty blockers has on young people’s lives”.

And young people never ever grow up to regret things they did to their bodies when they were young. Cocaine, alcohol, fentanyl, whatever, it’s all good. Bring on the body modifications!

She added: “I truly believed that the Labour government would not take this ban forward following the consultation process. Parents reported that they had told him of the anguish caused by the ban and Wes Streeting stood there and told those young people and their families that he heard them.

“Yet he walked away and chose to ignore them, as he has also ignored the 59 per cent of consultation responses, from respondents of his choosing, that said a ban should not go ahead.”

He didn’t “choose to ignore them”; he chose to protect them from lunatics like Susie Green.

Surprise surprise, it’s not just France.

Telegram ‘rape chat groups’ with up to 70,000 members uncovered

Ain’t technology great?

Thousands of men are participating in chat groups in which they share suggestions on how to rape and sexually assault women, a German investigation has revealed.

The groups, on the instant messaging service Telegram, have as many as 70,000 members who mostly communicate with one another in English and appear to come from a variety of countries.

Users claimed to have assaulted women in their household, including wives, partners, sisters and mothers, and also shared instructions with others on how to do the same.

It’s what Germaine Greer said – “Women have very little idea of how much men hate them.”

The BBC reports:

A 15-year-old boy has been charged after a mobile phone was discovered hidden in a girls’ toilet at a secondary school in Dundee.

The incident is understood to have come to light when a female pupil at the school discovered the device on Tuesday afternoon.

Police Scotland said the boy has been charged in connection, following a report of voyeurism.

A new Dominique Pelicot in the making.

Masha Gessen in the NYRB November 10, 2016 on the rules of survival in an autocracy:

[Obama] added, “The point, though, is that we all go forward with a presumption of good faith in our fellow citizens, because that presumption of good faith is essential to a vibrant and functioning democracy.” As if Donald Trump had not conned his way into hours of free press coverage, as though he had released (and paid) his taxes, or not brazenly denigrated our system of government, from the courts and Congress, to the election process itself—as if, in other words, he had not won the election precisely by acting in bad faith.

Similar refrains were heard from various members of the liberal commentariat, with Tom Friedman vowing, “I am not going to try to make my president fail,” to Nick Kristof calling on “the approximately 52 percent majority of voters who supported someone other than Donald Trump” to “give president Trump a chance.” Even the politicians who have in the past appealed to the less-establishment part of the Democratic electorate sounded the conciliatory note. Senator Elizabeth Warren promised to “put aside our differences.” Senator Bernie Sanders was only slightly more cautious, vowing to try to find the good in Trump: “To the degree that Mr. Trump is serious about pursuing policies that improve the lives of working families in this country, I and other progressives are prepared to work with him.”

Blah blah blah, but he’s not that guy. He never has been, and he wasn’t then, and it was obvious he wasn’t. Then he spent four years demonstrating how thoroughly he isn’t that guy. He’s a bad man. Really bad. The kind of bad where there’s no good to leaven it a little. The kind of bad that prefers doing bad things to doing good ones. The kind of bad that enjoys watching people suffer. The kind we all hope never to encounter.

The second falsehood is the pretense that America is starting from scratch and its president-elect is a tabula rasa. Or we are: “we owe him an open mind.” It was as though Donald Trump had not, in the course of his campaign, promised to deport US citizens, promised to create a system of surveillance targeted specifically at Muslim Americans, promised to build a wall on the border with Mexico, advocated war crimes, endorsed torture, and repeatedly threatened to jail Hillary Clinton herself. It was as though those statements and many more could be written off as so much campaign hyperbole and now that the campaign was over, Trump would be eager to become a regular, rule-abiding politician of the pre-Trump era.

Eight years later, he’s eager to become the worst monster any of us have ever met in our nightmares.

Good to see that the bros are learning from the Pelicot trial.

That last sentence is a translation of “Allez les tricoteuses!” That’s a vintage sexist insult dating back to The Revolution: it labeled women on the left who supposedly sat around knitting while heads rolled. It was not well received.