Wings Over Scotland tells us he’s closing down at least temporarily.

In the meantime you can hear of any developments, or get in touch, on my personal account @RevStu or on @TheGhostOfWings, both of which have had, or are about to have, all their old tweets wiped.

We’re not going to overdramatise, because we hope this is only for a few days. We’re optimistic that the Scottish Government’s abysmal, sinister and totalitarian Hate Crime Act, opposed across every sector of Scottish society and even by the police charged with implementing it, will not put an end to 12 and a half years of political journalism.

But you can’t write or tweet from a prison cell.

The Scottish Government

Bizarre male tv presenter says India Willoughby is “recognizably, and I think, as far as I know, is legally a woman.”

Recognizably? How? He doesn’t mean “recognizably”; he means something like convincingly. Those are very different things. Yes, some photos of Willoughby make him look quite a bit like a woman, but he’s not recognizable as a woman because he isn’t a woman.

The difference in meaning is matched by the difference in fact. Yes India Willoughby pretends to be a woman; no that does not make India Willoughby a woman. Anybody can pretend to be anything; the imagination is a fine thing; pretending to be X is not the same thing as being X. Willoughby’s … Read the rest

George M. Perry at The Federalist:

The IOC’s sophistic gymnastics to deny sex-based categories in sport prompted 26 researchers from around the world to rebut the IOC’s framework. Their paper, published last week in the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports, is the latest peer-reviewed study providing evidence of the obvious about sex in sports.

The researchers reviewed studies from “evolutionary and developmental biology, zoology, physiology, endocrinology, medicine, sport and exercise science, [and] athletic performance results within male and female sport” to refute the IOC’s position that male athletes warrant “no presumption of advantage” over female athletes based on “biological or physiological characteristics.”

It’s been a mere illusion all this time that men are bigger, stronger, … Read the rest

Oh great, because there aren’t enough trans days in the calendar yet. There should be at least 50.

Also yay for more trans visibility, because our trans siblings have been far too bashful and retiring up to now. Step up, sibs! Take a bow! Tell us about yourselves! Then tell us more!… Read the rest

Ew.

Former President Donald Trump is officially selling a patriotic copy of the Christian Bible themed to Lee Greenwood’s famous song, “God Bless the USA.”

“Happy Holy Week!” Trump announced on social media Tuesday, during the most solemn period of the Christian calendar, the last week of the Lenten season marking the suffering and death of Jesus. “As we lead into Good Friday and Easter, I encourage you to get a copy of the God Bless The USA Bible.”

Patriotism n Bibleism n corruption n greed n sadistic bullying – what a package!… Read the rest

When we say “Women’s House” of course we mean…

A distraught woman has sent me this photo of Sacred Heart Mission’s “Women’s” House in St Kilda, Melbourne, covered in trans ribbons.

The woman who is a DV survivor and fearful of men has had to self-exclude from the crisis service, which is explicit about its inclusion of… pic.twitter.com/cLrAGEwWJf

— Rachael Wong (@RachaelWongAus) March 28, 2024

Honestly you couldn’t make it up. The Catholic church and men who pretend to be women unite to squash women even harder. … Read the rest

Originally a comment by maddog1129 on Flying Bats FC won every match.

[T]he Flying Bats FC stand strongly for inclusion, and pride ourselves on safe, respectful and fair play, the promotion of a supportive community for LGBTQIA+ players, officials and supporters, and the significant physical, social and mental health benefits that participation in sport brings, especially to marginalised members of the LGBTQIA+ community.

You can “pride yourselves” on your so-called virtues all you want, but every one of those virtues has an inversion. It reminds me of Mark Twain’s “The War Prayer,” in which a man stumbled into the church and preached the ugliness of blight, death, injury, and pain to be inflicted on the enemy and all their … Read the rest

Victoria Smith aka Glosswitch takes on the bros who pride themselves on their top class rationality. She starts with Freddie de Boer and moves on to Jon Ronson and Adam Buxton who discussed

how a “mutual friend” of theirs (Graham Linehan) had become “kind of obsessed” with the issue, which they didn’t see fit to examine themselves. The intimation was that it was all a little bit mad and unseemly. Why would anyone get obsessed with that? Isn’t it funny how people go down those rabbit holes? You’d never catch either of them doing that. Anyhow, Ronson did think about the issue once and decided it would be mean to think about it again. 

And in doing so he … Read the rest

More on “women’s” football in New South Wales:

A women’s football competition has been branded “misogynist” after it was won by a team featuring five transgender [male] players amid accusations one had broken an opponents’ leg in two places.

Flying Bats FC won every match they played during the four-week Beryl Ackroyd Cup, including a 10-0 victory in which one of their trans players scored a double hat-trick.

Since winning [Flying Bats FC won] Sunday’s final in Sydney, Australia, 4-0, it has emerged [that] organisers had earlier held a crisis meeting, during which rival teams were warned forfeiting games against the Bats would result in disciplinary action and could even be viewed as “an act of discrimination”.

This thing … Read the rest

Bad lying dishonest deceptive evasive manipulative “reporting” continues:

The UK’s first transgender judge is seeking leave to join the litigation in a crucial supreme court case that could significantly affect legal protections for transgender women, the Guardian has learned.

Terrible lede. Deliberately omits the most vital piece of information. This is a man who is trying to steal women’s rights for himself.

Victoria McCloud, a senior civil judge who became the youngest person appointed as master of the high court in 2010, will make an application to intervene in the supreme court appeal brought by the campaign group For Women Scotland about the legal definition of “woman”. Interveners can put a case without being among the main parties to

Speaking of brazenly unapologetically insulting women –

UN picks Saudi Arabia to lead women’s rights forum

Hello, UN? Define “women’s rights” for us.

Saudi Arabia has been chosen as the chair of the UN commission that is supposed to promote gender equality and empower women around the world, after an unopposed bid for leadership condemned by human rights groups because of the kingdom’s “abysmal” record on women’s rights.

The Saudi ambassador to the UN, Abdulaziz Alwasil, was elected as chair of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), by “acclamation” on Wednesday, as there were no rival candidates and no dissent at the CSW’s annual meeting in New York.

…

Normally a country holds the chair for two years,

Golly gee, I wonder what’s going on here.

The Flying Bats won the pre-season final last weekend 4-0. On their way to the final they won all their games including a 10-0 win. Five of the Flying Bats team are trans-women.

A “lesbian” soccer team with five player who are MEN.… Read the rest

Yet another.

Irish dancer Ava Rose Folan has been denied a medal in The World Irish Dancing Championships.

The medal she should have received was stolen by Alyssa SaltzMAN, photo below, a boy competing in the girl's category.

This madness must end. pic.twitter.com/9miDWD5Qh7

— Brandubh (@brandubh4) March 27, 2024

… Read the rest

I read Lucy Hunter Blackburn on the hate crime bill a day or two ago but not as anxiously as I did just now. Since the new law will apparently apply to anyone anywhere, the sitch is worse than I realized.

The new law gives few assurances for protecting freedom of speech: there’s a small caveat for religion, but not for what have become known as gender-critical beliefs. Those who campaign against gender self-ID fear they will soon be reported to the police. Joanna Cherry KC, a Scottish Nationalist MP, has said she has ‘no doubt’ that the law ‘will be weaponised by trans rights activists to try to silence, and worse still, criminalise women who do not share

Originally a comment by Screechy Monkey on Process as punishment.

There is apparently an expression among some law enforcement types that “you can beat the rap, but you can’t beat the ride.” Meaning that if cops decide to arrest you and drive you around in the back of their squad car for hours before processing you (typically so that it’s too late to arraign you until the next day and you have to spend the night in jail before you can get bail set), then you’re not getting that time and inconvenience back even if the charges are quickly dropped or dismissed.

This is also why I get so ranty about speech-restrictive laws being dangerous even when they’re supposedly … Read the rest

Wings Over Scotland:

Welcome, readers, to what may be the final week of Wings Over Scotland.

We’ve been covering the Scottish Government’s horrific, draconian Hate Crime Act for almost four years now. But until this month, we hadn’t felt directly under threat by it. Wings is – sorry if this comes as a shock to anyone – based in Bath, in England, and we couldn’t see how the Scottish police could come after us.

But then they were informed that Scottish law holds that anything on social media which can be read in Scotland is published in Scotland.

…then lawyer after lawyer queued up to support his interpretation, and we became alarmed. Along with JK Rowling, For

A new hate-crime law in Scotland causes widespread concern

Subhead:

Transgender identity is protected; biological sex is not

Thank you for noticing and saying. That’s so unusual. The BBC and the Guardian take great pains not to notice and not to say. They take such great, and conspicuous, pains that I’m pretty confident they know they’re doing it, that they do it with malice aforethought, that it’s not mere clumsiness or absence of mind or confusion.

Scotland already has an offence of “stirring up racial hatred”. From April it will become a crime to use “threatening or abusive” behaviour with the intention of stirring up hatred on the basis of other characteristics, too—namely religion, age, disability, sexual orientation and

Always lead with the careful obfuscation.

Practical suggestions on how sports federations can be fair to transgender athletes

He means male “transgender” athletes of course, but he hides that in the usual way. He is one Andy Harvey, a former lecturer in sport science at Swansea University, writing for an outlet called Play the Game.

In the absence of robust scientific data, sports federations should take an ethical approach on how to include transgender athletes. Andy Harvey suggests developing benchmarks for tolerable unfairness and baselines for acceptable safety risks as a way to determine if transgender athletes should be included or not. 

That’s cool because the “tolerable” unfairness will have to be tolerated by women, not men. Obviously that’s … Read the rest

Case dropped.

A government lawyer who faced legal action after expressing gender-critical views at work including commenting that only women menstruate has had the case against her dropped.

Elspeth Duemmer-Wrigley works for an arm’s-length body affiliated to the Department for Environment Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) and was due to appear at a tribunal this week accused of harassment.

The claimant has now officially withdrawn all accusations against Duemmer-Wrigley, who is a chairwoman of a civil service network that represents staff with gender-critical views.

That is, a civil service network that represents staff who are aware that people can’t change sex. Weird that it needs a network; weird that there are apparently staff who think people can change sex.… Read the rest

Is there an authoritative list of what we’re allowed to hate and what we’re not?

Are we allowed, for instance, to hate the trans ideology?

Are we allowed to hate misogyny? (That’s a pun of sorts, but it’s also what I mean. Are we allowed?)

Are we allowed to hate bad illiberal lawmaking?

Are we allowed to hate religions?

Are we allowed to hate tyrants?

Is it a hate crime to hate Donald Trump, and to say so, with details?

Is it a crime to hate Putin? Hamas? Netanyahu? Kim Jong Un?

Please advise.

Humza Yousaf is attacking not merely free speech but our concept of law and morality. It's actually worse than you thinkhttps://t.co/3Onv7mN0YS pic.twitter.com/kU3Ej9Kiqz

— Effie Deans