Jo Bartosch explains those arrests in Leeds yesterday:

Yesterday, when the group Standing for Women tried to assemble at Victoria Square in Leeds to discuss the proposed changes to the Gender Recognition Act (2004) (GRA) their meeting was broken-up by the police. Three of the sixteen women were arrested, including the event organiser Kellie-Jay Keen. A lengthy risk assessment had been completed and submitted ahead of the event to ensure the group were Covid-19 compliant, and the police were kept fully appraised of the group’s plans. After the event Kelly-Jay Keen explained that she knew [she] was likely to be arrested, part of the reason she refused to give her details to the police was in order to have the opportunity to voice her concerns in court.

Despite the current draconian regulations prohibiting public gatherings, there is an exemption for political events. Thanks to this, protests such as Black Lives Matter have been allowed to go ahead unimpeded. But according to West Yorkshire Police, women’s rights are not a political cause. A police officer told Kelly-Jay Keen that Standing for Women “failed to meet the legal definition of a political organisation”, though he himself seemed unable to explain what the legal definition of a political organisation was.

Says it all, doesn’t it. There are such things as oppressed groups…it’s just that women aren’t one of them. Women are meant to be subordinate. Women really are inferior. Women are the second sex.

It seems no-one can quite decide whether Standing for Women is political. In July Network Rail removed a billboard reading “I ♥ JKR” that had been paid for by the campaign group. This statement was in support of the children’s author J K Rowling, who has been accused of transphobia for raising concerns about gender self-identification. Network Rail stated that it had received complaints and somewhat bizarrely concluded that “I ♥ JKR” was a political statement. A freedom of information request revealed there were no emails requesting the poster be taken down, but that there were 158 complaining about its removal.

Yes but the complainers were all women, or doing the bidding of women, and women really are inferior, so of course Network Rail did the right thing.

Whether an innocuous poster or a socially distanced protest, it seems statements in support of women’s rights are deemed threatening, branded either “too political” or “not political enough” and shut down using whichever method is most expedient. Speaking after her arrest and release Kellie-Jay Keen said:

It is not really the right of the state or the police to tell people they are not allowed to assemble to discuss their rights … everyone should have the right to assemble in this country, it is the foundation of our democracy and the fact it’s being cancelled by over-zealous police forces should concern us all.

Feminists occupy a strange “no-man’s land” in the culture wars, hated as ‘TERFs’ (trans exclusionary radical feminists) by the mainstream left and sneered at as identity-obsessed faux victims by the right. But defending the rights of 51% of the population should not be seen as a niche concern; struggling to end the violence of men at home is every bit as political as campaigning for peace in foreign nations.

Yes but if you keep in mind that women really are inferior, you get to count them as only a small fraction of a person, so actually the 51% is more like 10%. Ok? Clear enough now?

Updating to add a demonstration of how it works; SW is Professor Stephen Whittle.

H/t guest