All entries by this author
Jun 23rd, 2024 11:37 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Always with the distortions and untruths.
BBC Radio 4:
The author JK Rowling has said she’ll struggle to support Labour at the General Election, accusing Sir Keir Starmer of abandoning women who are concerned about transgender rights.
What a sly invidious way of putting it. No we’re not “concerned about transgender rights.” We’re concerned about women’s rights. Transgender people should have the human rights everyone else has.
They say it not once but twice.
JK Rowling says she has been a Labour voter all her adult life but she says as long as Labour remains dismissive and often offensive towards women concerned about transgender rights, she will struggle to support the party.
This despite the fact that she explicitly … Read the rest
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Jun 23rd, 2024 9:37 am |
By Ophelia Benson
More on the guest appearance of out on parole Sarah Jane Baker still busy intimidating women.
That’s the fella – red beret, sunglasses, striped top, black shorts.
He comes into view at 5 seconds, brandishing his anarchist flag on its metal pole.
… Read the rest
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Jun 23rd, 2024 9:14 am |
By Ophelia Benson
It appears that team trans has succeeded in completely shutting down the Let Women Speak [note the irony] rally in Brighton.
https://twitter.com/Ashworth101/status/1804896812421017946
And That Guy was there.
https://twitter.com/VinaigretteGirl/status/1804898253273460762…
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Jun 23rd, 2024 8:10 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Tick tick tick tick
No one in r/Costco — the Reddit group dedicated to the beloved bulk store — could get over it. The hefty, store-brand olive oil bottles they had been purchasing for years, the ones they all agreed were the best and cheapest around, suddenly cost twice what they used to…No one in r/Costco — the Reddit group dedicated to the beloved bulk store — could get over it. The hefty, store-brand olive oil bottles they had been purchasing for years, the ones they all agreed were the best and cheapest around, suddenly cost twice what they used to.
…
In March, a study from scientists at the European Central Bank and the Potsdam Institute for Climate
…
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Jun 23rd, 2024 7:05 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Chapter eleventy billion of Starmer saying his record on women’s rights is fabulous so shut up.
Keir Starmer has said he is proud of Labour’s history on women’s rights after JK Rowling said she would struggle to support the party because of its stance on transgender rights. Starmer told reporters on Saturday that he was “very proud of the progress” of past Labour governments, which made a “material difference” to women’s lives.
Yes see that’s not the issue – as of course he knows perfectly well. The issue is what he will do, and the fact that he gives every indication that he will continue to fling shit at women who refuse to agree that men can be women. We’re … Read the rest
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Jun 22nd, 2024 5:28 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
Same old same old same old same old.
Keir Starmer has said he is proud of Labour’s history on women’s rights after JK Rowling said she would struggle to support the party because of its stance on transgender rights.
Starmer told reporters on Saturday that he was “very proud of the progress” of past Labour governments, which made a “material difference” to women’s lives.
Yes we know, and that’s not the issue. The issue is not past Labour but current Labour.
Writing in the Times on Saturday, Rowling, a former Labour member and donor, said she would struggle to vote for the party “as long as Labour remains dismissive and often offensive towards women fighting to retain the[ir] rights”.
…
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Jun 22nd, 2024 11:41 am |
By Ophelia Benson
More on Starmer’s exasperated contempt for women:
Starmer has a woman problem, or more specifically, he finds the women who argue for their sex-based rights to be respected, both in law and in practice, extremely irritating. He could barely contain his exasperation during the BBC’s Question Time on Thursday when a young woman asked him about his current views on biological sex, reminding him that he had previously criticised Labour MP Rosie Duffield for stating that “only women have a cervix”. He said at the time her statement of the obvious was something that shouldn’t have been said. “It’s not right.”
It seems he has changed his mind – or has he? Adopting his best human rights lawyer pose,
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Jun 22nd, 2024 10:41 am |
By Ophelia Benson
A little happy ending story.
A pet donkey that escaped his owners five years ago in California has been found “living his best life” with a herd of wild elk. Terrie and Dave Drewry, of Auburn, are convinced the animal, filmed by a hiker earlier in June, is their pet “Diesel”.
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Diesel was spooked and took off during a hiking trip with Mr Drewry near Clear Lake, California in 2019. Weeks of volunteer searches proved fruitless, and a trail camera image a few months later was the last time he was seen…Then hiker Max Fennell spotted the herd earlier this month, describing the donkey as “happy and healthy”, and posted his film on social media…The elk herd is
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Jun 22nd, 2024 10:14 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Bad stupid man complains about woman having concerns he doesn’t approve of.
Bad stupid man accuses women who disagree with his bad stupid tweet of “swarming” his “mentions.” Man said a bad stupid thing and women replied. That’s not “swarming” and man’s “mentions” are not sacred ground that must be kept immaculately clean.
…
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Jun 22nd, 2024 6:55 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Hmm. Nigel Farage speaks up in defense of manly pastimes like beating up women:
Nigel Farage has praised the misogynist influencer Andrew Tate for being an “important voice” for the “emasculated” and giving boys “perhaps a bit of confidence at school” in online interviews that appear to be aimed at young men over the past year.
The Reform UK leader spoke in favour of Tate for defending “male culture” in a Strike It Big podcast that aired in February, while acknowledging that the influencer had gone “over the top” and elsewhere that he had said some “pretty horrible” things.
Good old male culture, with its mischievous delight in choking and punching and raping women.
Since December 2022, Tate has
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Jun 21st, 2024 5:39 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
The Telegraph reports on the Times report on Starmer’s hostility to women. (Meta enough yet?)
Writing in an article for The Times, Ms Rowling also attacked Sir Keir for failing to defend Rosie Duffield, the gender-critical Labour MP who was investigated by her own party and has received death threats for her gender-critical views.
“Rosie has received literally no support from Starmer over the threats and abuse, some of which has originated from within the Labour Party itself, and has had a severe, measurable impact on her life,” said Ms Rowling.
And, just in case anyone is coming in late, it’s not just a matter of passive no support, as it were; it’s a matter of evading the question when … Read the rest
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2 comments
Jun 21st, 2024 4:04 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
JKR has a stemwinder of a piece on Labour’s contempt for women.
She went to a launch party for The Women Who Wouldn’t Wheesht yesterday evening, and got home just in time to join her husband watching Keir Starmer on TV.
“Three years ago,” the woman in the studio audience said to Keir Starmer, “you criticised your MP Rosie Duffield for saying ‘only women have a cervix’. You recently backtracked on this. What do you believe now, and how do we know that you will stick to your views?” Ah, Cervixgate. I remember it well. It was September 2021 and I was sitting at my kitchen table reading over the chapter I’d finished the day before. The TV was
…
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Jun 21st, 2024 9:41 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Sigh. Religion is good for people.
The official death toll from this year’s Hajj pilgrimage has soared to almost 500 and the true toll could be more than double that as reports emerged that as many as 600 Egyptian worshipers perished on the route to Mecca amid extreme heat.
At least 14 Malaysians, 165 Indonesians, 68 Jordanians, 35 Pakistanis, 35 Tunisians, 11 Iranians and 98 Indians have died, according to authorities in each country. A further 22 Jordanians are hospitalized and 16 are still missing, the Jordanian Foreign Ministry said.
Dozens of Iranians have also been hospitalized due to heatstroke and other conditions, the Iranian Red Crescent said Wednesday, according to Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency.
Why doesn’t their … Read the rest
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Jun 21st, 2024 9:18 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Can we spot the flaw?
Why yes, we can. The burqa is not a symbol of freedom. The women of Afghanistan are forced to wear it, on pain of violence and death.
These imbeciles should book their trip to Kabul immediately.
Update: On the other hand Oli in London needs to date his sources: this is from 2019 and not in London but Amsterdam. So why are the signs in English? I don’t know – possibly because English is the lingua franca in the Netherlands and Scandinavia.… Read the rest
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2 comments
Jun 21st, 2024 8:56 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Oh by the way
Reports of domestic abuse made to Women’s Aid in the Republic of Ireland reached a record high in 2023. The charity said there had been an 18% increase in disclosures of domestic abuse to it compared to the previous year. This, it added, was the most it had received in its 50-year history.
A Cathal Crotty in every home, yeah?
On Wednesday, Women’s Aid also said they had heard from service users that their partners or ex-partners were subjecting them to a broad and brutal pattern of abuse. Among these, women reported assaults with weapons, constant surveillance, and monitoring, relentless put downs and humiliations and the taking and sharing of intimate images online.
There was also
…
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Jun 21st, 2024 8:28 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Still not making any kind of sense.
BBC:
Cathal Crotty, 22, attacked 24-year-old Natasha O’Brien, punching her six times, after she asked him to stop shouting homophobic abuse. Ms O’Brien’s injuries included a broken nose and bruising. She told the court she has suffered nightmares and panic attacks.
Crotty was given a three-year suspended sentence on Thursday. The judge described the attack as a “cowardly, vicious, unprovoked” assault. However, he said the defendant “must be given credit” for his guilty plea and told the court he had “no doubt” that if Crotty was jailed his army “career is over”.
Where is the “must” in “must be given credit” for pleading guilty? If it’s a legal “must” that’s one thing, … Read the rest
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