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Toxic and traditionalist

First of all what a dopy title.

‘Carnage of concern and upset’: Women’s Institute groups close after transgender ban

What the hell is a carnage of concern?

You’d think a Guardian subeditor would have a better vocabulary than that. The root word – the “carn” bit – is the same as the one in carnivore. Meat. Carnage is bloody slaughter, it’s not distressing disagreement.

Anyway.

At least 12 Women’s Institute (WI) groups are closing or considering closure after the organisation barred transgender women from membership.

Members say more groups are likely to close, and that the federation’s decision has opened up a toxic, traditionalist culture that will deter younger women from joining.

Ahhhhhhh toxic and traditionalist is it. It’s traditionalist … Read the rest

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Toxic and traditionalist
By Ophelia Benson, February 14, 2026

First of all what a dopy title.

‘Carnage of concern and upset’: Women’s Institute groups close after transgender ban

What the hell is a carnage of concern?

You’d think a Guardian subeditor would have a better vocabulary than that. The root word – the “carn” bit – is the same as the one in carnivore. Meat. Carnage is bloody slaughter, it’s not distressing disagreement.

Anyway.

At least 12 Women’s Institute (WI) groups are closing or considering closure after the organisation barred transgender women from membership.

Members say more groups are likely to close, and that the federation’s decision has opened up a toxic, traditionalist culture that will deter younger women from joining.

Ahhhhhhh toxic and traditionalist is it. It’s traditionalist … Read the rest

Archives
Bad Moves
Articles
Flashback
In Focus
Latest News
Letters
Notes and Comment Blog

Toxic and traditionalist 

First of all what a dopy title.

‘Carnage of concern and upset’: Women’s Institute groups close after transgender ban

What the hell is a carnage of concern?

You’d think a Guardian subeditor would have a better vocabulary than that. The root word – the “carn” bit – is the same as the one in carnivore. Meat. Carnage is bloody slaughter, it’s not distressing disagreement.

Anyway.

At least 12 Women’s Institute (WI) groups are closing or considering closure after the organisation barred transgender women from membership.

Members say more groups are likely to close, and that the federation’s decision has opened up a toxic, traditionalist culture that will deter younger women from joining.

Ahhhhhhh toxic and traditionalist is it. It’s traditionalist … Read the rest

Its own cloak of glamour 

Fintan O’Toole is on fire:

Epstein’s cult demanded human sacrifice, preferably that of young virgins. (“He likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side,” Donald Trump smirked in 2002.) The scale of the demand was vast: the US department of justice estimated that Epstein sexually abused more than a thousand girls.

Those girls were, in this system, fungible assets, their value interchangeable with that of the dollar. They functioned as currency in an elite gift economy, passed around as tokens of status – to be granted the right to use their bodies was to be in with an ultimate in-crowd, a charmed circle of mutual enrichment and reciprocal advancement.

Sexual

… Read the rest
Nobody 

Golly. I know it seems silly to be surprised by anything about Trump at this point, but still, this caused me to manage it.

I can’t imagine saying this ONCE, let alone so many times it goes on for two minutes and ten seconds. His fans would say it’s just theatrics, just being The Donald, yadda yadda – but there’s no space between just being himself and this grotesque string of claims to be omniscient. Any possible space has been obliterated as we’ve watched him performing Man Who Thinks He’s Best At Everything And Knows More About Everything Than Anyone.

Also, it occurs to me, it’s sort of explanatory. This is why nothing gets through to him, ever. He really … Read the rest

How it plays out 

A must-read:

This is How a Child Dies of Measles… Read the rest

Guest post: Now and then the yachts have to come into port 

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Might as well fall faster.

Pessimistic grouchiness? Alright then.

(Rolls up sleeves, cracks knuckles, begins to type.)

What these idiots throw out with their dismissal of science is the understanding of the nuance and complexity of what is happening. One might normally expect “nuance and and complexity” to be about subtle, unlikely edge effects, or rare cases, but the complications of climate change (and the destruction of Earth’s biodiversity) are likely to be sudden, extreme, and mutually reinforcing. Our entire planet has become an edge effect.

We have pushed the Earth system beyond the envelope of conditions that allowed the origin and evolution of human civilization itself. These are the … Read the rest

The law is clear 

The Telegraph on that ruling that has Jolyon in a snit:

Employers can legally ban transgender women from using female toilets and changing rooms, the High Court has ruled.

Employers can legally ban men from using women’s toilets. Remember when it was just taken for granted that men were banned from using women’s toilets? Remember when men could be arrested for perving on women that way? I do.

Activists had challenged interim guidance from the equalities watchdog that said public bodies and organisations should segregate toilets, changing rooms and sports teams by biological sex rather than self-declared identity.

But on Friday a judge dismissed their claims that the guidance was unlawful because it conflicted with previous human rights and equalities

… Read the rest
Power 

Classy people.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem reportedly had a Coast Guard pilot fired because she was missing a blanket – only to realize there was no one else to fly her home.

The former South Dakota governor had been forced to switch planes after a maintenance issue was discovered, but her blanket was not moved to the second plane, those familiar with the incident told the Wall Street Journal. She then reportedly had her special advisor Corey Lewandowski fire the US Coast Guard pilot, who was told to take a commercial flight home once they reached their destination.

But when staffers learned there was nobody else available to fly the plane, the unidentified pilot was

… Read the rest
Some hideous gurning goon 

This. I have been wondering/fuming about this for YEARS.

…one day soon, drag artists will be about as politically acceptable as the Black and White Minstrels are today. Right now, you cannot turn on your TV without being assailed by some hideous gurning goon in a garish dress and ludicrous make-up lampooning the female sex – the BBC, in particular, seems obsessed with drag queens. They are even invited into our schools to disseminate filth masquerading as sex education to kids.

For some reason, a reason hard to comprehend, the objections made about ‘blacking up’ do not apply to drag artists. They are, of course, two sides of the same coin, or perhaps the same side of the coin.

… Read the rest
Might as well fall faster 

More on those pesky regulations Trump is deleting:

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) first took a stance on the impacts of greenhouse gases in 2009, in the first year of Obama’s first term. The agency decided that six key planet-warming greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide and methane, were a danger to human health. With a divided Congress unable to agree on legislation to tackle rising global temperatures, the EPA finding became central to federal efforts to rein in emissions in the years that followed.

“The endangerment finding has really served as the lynchpin of US regulation of greenhouse gases,” said Meghan Greenfield, a former EPA and Department of Justice attorney. “So that includes motor vehicles, but it also includes power

… Read the rest
Legal challenge dismissed 

High Court rules: EHRC guidance lawful

The High Court has dismissed a legal challenge from the Good Law Project (GLP) and three anonymous claimants against the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC)’s interim guidance on single-sex services published last year.

Sex Matters intervened in support of the EHRC.

Mr Justice Swift endorsed the interim update that the EHRC published in April last year as an accurate statement of the law for employers and service providers and ruled that “transsexual persons” under the Equality Act have no right to use opposite-sex toilets or changing rooms.

Somewhere, deep inside the forest, a jolyon is raging.… Read the rest

Erasing the scientific finding 

Trump deletes the science.

Trump on Thursday announced he was erasing the scientific finding that climate change endangers human health and the environment, ending the federal government’s legal authority to control the pollution that is dangerously heating the planet.

The action is a key step in removing limits on carbon dioxide, methane and four other greenhouse gases that scientists say are supercharging heat waves, droughts, wildfires and other extreme weather.

We love heat waves! And droughts, and wildfires!

Led by a president who refers to climate change as a “hoax,” the administration is essentially saying that the vast majority of scientists around the world are wrong and that a hotter planet is not the menace that decades of research

… Read the rest
And stay out 

High court rules:

The High Court has dismissed a legal challenge from the Good Law Project (GLP) and three anonymous claimants against the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC)’s interim guidance on single-sex services published last year.

Sex Matters intervened in support of the EHRC.

Mr Justice Swift endorsed the interim update that the EHRC published in April last year as an accurate statement of the law for employers and service providers and ruled that “transsexual persons” under the Equality Act have no right to use opposite-sex toilets or changing rooms.

Women win, Jolyon loses.

GLP was judged not to have standing as it lacked “sufficient interest” in the legal questions. The three anonymous claimants did have standing, and

… Read the rest
That man works for you now 

Yikes.

Bondi’s indifference is a sight to behold.… Read the rest

Tomorrow 

EPA says Never mind.

Trump announced Thursday that the Environmental Protection Agency is rescinding the legal finding that it has relied on for nearly two decades to limit the heat-trapping pollution that spews from vehicle tailpipes, oil refineries and factories.

Oh. Great. We’re just going to pretend it’s not happening and do nothing to slow it and let the current generation of children fix it way down the road when it’s not our problem any more.

The repeal of that landmark determination, known as the endangerment finding, will upend most U.S. policies aimed at curbing climate change.

The finding — which the EPA issued in 2009 — said the global warming caused by greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide

… Read the rest
Does razing count as interfering with? 

Last month a judge told Trump to cool his jets on the Ballroom plans.

In October, the administration bulldozed the East Wing of the White House in order to build a ballroom he wants to put on the site. Although Trump had promised over the summer that the project wouldn’t “interfere with the current building,” workers razed the entire structure, which was constructed in 1902 and expanded in 1942. 

Well that’s what he meant. It won’t interfere with it, it will obliterate it altogether. Totally not deceptive at all.

Trump managed this the same way he has so much in his second term: He simply didn’t ask permission from any of the possible relevant authorities, including Congress, and acted so

… Read the rest
Some international standard 

Róisín Michaux writes on TwitX:

The EU Parliament has voted to recognise “trans women” as women for all purposes, explicitly calling for them to be granted access to women-only domestic violence shelters and refugees.

An EU delegation will present this radical recommendation at the UN Commission on the Status of Women in New York next month. It is not binding, but intended to be adopted/followed as an “international standard”. It also demonstrates the ideological makeup of the European Parliament.

Few speakers mentioned the “trans women” part of the recommendation during the debate leading up to the vote. Parties could have asked for a vote on the individual paragraph, but having failed to do so, MEPs were left with a

… Read the rest
The 18-year-old what? 

Oh look – today the BBC is not calling the shooter a woman.

Police identify 18-year-old as suspect in Tumbler Ridge shooting

Not calling him a man either, you’ll notice. They don’t want to get all extreme about this.

“I can say that Jesse was born as a biological male who approximately six years ago began to transition to female,” Dwayne McDonald, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) deputy commissioner, said.

The shooting at the nearby home occurred first, then the suspect went to the school, McDonald said. The victims at the school were a 39-year-old female educator, three female students, all aged 12, and two male students, one aged 12 and the other 13.

Huh. Will you look at … Read the rest

Ethical and unethical journalism 

Journalist Janet Murray writes

There are unethical people in every profession. Journalism is no exception.

But unethical journalism isn’t only about phone hacking, going through bins or taking bribes.

At its core, it’s about knowingly misrepresenting reality.

Yesterday’s case involved one of the worst mass shootings in Canada’s history – the kind of event where the stakes for getting the facts right could not be higher.

You cannot claim to uphold journalistic standards while describing a crime committed by a man as having been committed by a woman.

Nor can you sidestep it by using the word “person” when sex is materially relevant.

Yet several major outlets did exactly that yesterday – including Sky and the BBC.

This isn’t about

… Read the rest
A very serious lie 

SEEN in Journalism makes the point I just made in a comment: that calling the perp a woman in the lede and not telling the truth until many paragraphs down is a grossly obvious violation of journalistic standards.

‘Canadian police have identified the suspect as an 18-year old woman with a history of mental health problems’ This is a very serious lie about a shattering event.

… Read the rest

A right to go into the Capitol and disrupt Congress A right to go into the Capitol and disrupt Congress 

Dude.

Like this?

… Read the rest