The Times on the sacking of Joan Smith:

A violence against women campaigner has claimed that she was sacked by Sadiq Khan’s administration after expressing concerns about transgender women being allowed into refuges for victims of rape and domestic abuse.

Joan Smith said she was removed by City Hall after raising the issue on behalf of charities funded by the mayor that were said to be concerned about the prospect of vulnerable women and girls having to share the spaces.

Smith also believes that she fell out of favour after calling for improvements in how the Metropolitan Police identified sexual predators in its ranks, and repeatedly highlighting “endemic misogyny” after the case of Sarah Everard, who was raped and murdered by a police officer.

Note the two levels of caution here – not just the claimed and said and believed, but also the after as opposed to because. Having two levels seems a bit superfluous, because surely “after” is enough by itself.

Boris Johnson appointed her when he was mayor of London. The current mayor of course is Labour – yet again reminding us that the left throws women overboard whenever it gets the chance.

Smith has been told her services are no longer required and that her position will be taken over by an official at City Hall.

Which makes no sense, because it’s not an “official at City Hall” kind of job. It’s not a job at all in the sense of being paid or protected – it’s a public service. It’s not a bureaucratic job, it’s a call in the experts job. Joan wrote the book.

She also wrote to Khan last year to tell him that traumatised female victims of male violence should not have to share spaces with male-bodied people (however they identified); he didn’t reply.

Sophie Linden, his deputy mayor for policing, responded to a similar letter that the mayor’s approach to providing services was “led by the needs of victims and survivors on a clear principle of non-discrimination”. 

And by “clear” she means “as obscure as possible.” Discrimination is necessary in some circumstances, like for instance the circumstance in which women need a refuge from male violence. In that case it’s necessary to discriminate between female bodies and male bodies, in order to provide the refuge needed. If someone is mauled by a bear, you don’t put her in a refuge with bears “on a clear principle of non-discrimination.” You discriminate between humans and bears in order to keep them apart. It’s not an invidious form of discrimination, it’s just factual. But the piety of the moment of course is that men must never ever EVER be correctly seen as men if they say they are women. That’s all they have to do, just say. Women, on the other hand, don’t get what they need by just saying, and in fact they’re punished for saying. Joan is being punished for saying. (Not really punished, exactly, since it’s a non-paying job which she did as a public service, so really Khan is punishing the women who would benefit rather than Joan herself – but of course it’s meant as a public rebuke and ostracism and punishment all the same.)

It’s a fucking outrage.

There’s a letter.