UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls Reem Alsalem responds to a response [pdf]:

On 18th of May 2023, the Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID) published
a statement on its website entitled “There is no place for anti-trans agendas in the UN”, which
as of today, was signed by 844 organizations and individuals. I was informed by the two
executive directors of AWID, Inna Michaeli and Faye Macheke Co-Executive Directors a week
later (the 24th of May 2023) that the letter had been published. A day later, I acknowledged
receipt and informed AWID that I would be responding to the letter at an appropriate time
and space. I am choosing to do so today.

In the

But…

A man who dressed as a woman to sexually assault another man has been found guilty by a jury.

Wayne Rogers, 47, wore a wig and fake breasts when he targeted a 20-year-old who had been out drinking in Bishop’s Stortford, Hertfordshire, in September.

But how do they know he’s not trans? Or non-binary? How do they know the wig and breasts were not sincere womaning by a sincere trans woman living her best life?

“He is a sexual predator that picks on drunk men and deceives them by being dressed as a woman,” prosecutor Mark Trafford KC said.

How can they know he’s not a trans woman? Maybe he’s too bashful to say he’s a trans woman, … Read the rest

The tweet Peter Tatchell keeps repeating, I guess on the theory that someone is bound to believe it if he says it often enough.

Trans women are trans women

They are not the same as biological women but they are equally valid

Two different kinds of women

One based on biological sex. One based on gender identity

Both victims of harassment & sexual violence

Unite to defend ALL women, including trans pic.twitter.com/qw8FQrR5gU

— Peter Tatchell (@PeterTatchell) September 5, 2023

Certainly, and by the same token, trans petertatchells are trans petertatchells.

They are not the same as biological petertatchells but they are equally valid.

Two different kinds of petertatchells.

One based on biological petertatchellness. One based on gender identity.

Unite to … Read the rest

Originally a comment by Mike Haubrich on Balance.

So, when we’re talking about extremes here, what do we mean? Is one extreme just handing out the hormones to everyone with a valid credit card, while the other is listening to people of good sense who say there is no such thing as being trans?

Or, how do they measure whether someone is truly trans and could benefit from hormones? Is there a gendersoul checker machine, a “t-meter” that works like the Scientology “e-meter,” measuring trangrams in pre-clears? Do they followup to check to see if one becomes clear after a certain number of months of treatment or do we just look to see if they pass? I think someone … Read the rest

Trump loses again!

A federal judge on Wednesday ruled that Donald Trump is civilly liable for defamatory statements he made about writer E. Jean Carroll in 2019 when she went public with claims he had raped her decades earlier.

Judge Lewis Kaplan, as part of that ruling, said the upcoming trial for Carroll’s lawsuit against Trump will only deal with the question of how much the former president should pay her in monetary damages for defaming her.

Loser loser loser. Trump is a loser. Can scowl at the camera all he wants; still a loser.

Normally, a jury would determine at trial whether a defendant is liable for civil damages claimed by a plaintiff. But Kaplan found that Carroll was

Trump in a Louis XIV wig.

From the Mirror:

An inmate groped two prison officers while they served her food in her cell, after being locked up for sexually assaulting a nurse.

Katana Paris who identifies as a woman, assaulted the male and female staff members at HMP Forest Bank in Salford last year. The female officer was serving Paris, 27, breakfast with the help of two inmates. Paris walked towards her and touched her inappropriately.

The following day, while being served lunch by a male prison officer, she reached through the hatch in her cell door and grabbed his genitals. Paris, who was part way through serving a three-year sentence at the time for sexual assaulting a

HAhahahahahahaha this should work very well.

Seen in the toilets of @ULBruxelles pic.twitter.com/0amCaaPRdv

— Róisín Michaux (@RoisinMichaux) September 6, 2023

Somebody really missed the memo. No no no, Sparky, we don’t push men to do anything, let alone pushing them to fuck men who pretend to be women. That would be gross. We push women to fuck men of every kind including the pretend-women kind and the pretend-man kind. We leave men strictly alone to do whatever they want all the time. Read that memo.… Read the rest

So the horrors will continue, just not at the NHS.

The director of a new private clinic has said he hopes to start prescribing cross-sex hormones within the “next couple of months” to teenagers questioning their gender. Dr Aidan Kelly is among several former staff from the Tavistock gender clinic who have set up a new practice that will provide private referrals for hormone treatment and reassignment surgery.

Gender Plus will charge £275 for a one-hour appointment, which can be booked via its website without an NHS referral. Anyone wishing to pursue hormone treatment to change gender must complete an assessment over six appointments, only one of which needs to be in person. The other five appointments may be

I missed this Spiked article back in June:

The ACLU is broken beyond repair

In March 1984, 14-year-old Karen Slattery was babysitting two children in a Florida home when Duane Owen broke in. He repeatedly raped her and then stabbed her to death. Two months later, Owen broke into the home of Georgianna Worden, before raping the 38-year-old mother and murdering her with a hammer. She was found in her bed the next morning by one of her children.

Last week, after he had spent three decades on death row, the state of Florida executed Owen for his crimes. On the day of the execution, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) issued a statement on social media decrying Florida’s

Locking him up.

Enrique Tarrio, the former national chairman of the Proud Boys, has been sentenced to 22 years in prison for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Tarrio was one of six Proud Boys leaders to be charged for conspiring to stop the certification of the 2020 presidential election results in Congress. Of them, he has received the longest prison sentence to date.

In short: fuck around and find out.

Tarrio was also convicted for obstructing an official proceeding, conspiracy to prevent an officer from discharging their duties, obstruction of law enforcement during a civil disorder and destruction of government property with value of over $1,000.

Tarrio wasn’t at the actual Capitol

Originally a comment by Nullius in Verba on Well ask yourself.

Um, he’s misusing the term “national identity”. A national identity isn’t something possessed by a person. It’s the sum total of values and culture that are core to a particular nation, such that one can say, “This is English,” or, “That’s not Spanish.” It’s how we identify whether a particular policy is consistent with the ethos undergirding a nation’s jurisprudence. When we talk about the American project, we’re talking about the national identity. We’re talking about the good and bad aspects of our culture and history that make Americans distinct from Britons, even though many of us descend directly from English stock.

This is not the same thing … Read the rest

Originally a comment by Sastra on Well ask yourself.

So gender identity would be to identify with the norms, values, expectations, practices, and beliefs a society has placed on the sexes.

Here’s the problem, though: the common claim made by people who insist that Gender Identity is more significant than sex is that GI has no direct relation to the norms, values, expectations, practices, and beliefs a society has placed on the sexes. It’s pure. Its existence is not influenced by culture, but culture will influence a trans girl to behave in a feminine manner in the same way a cis girl is influenced by her environment. Trans people are no longer said to identify with or as a … Read the rest

I probably shouldn’t laugh, but…

More chaos has unfolded at the Burning Man festival as revellers clashed during the exodus from the Nevada desert.

Attendees finally began leaving the city at Black Rock City on Monday afternoon after severe flooding and muddy conditions left thousands stranded over the weekend.

During the mass exodus, Pershing County Sheriff Jerry Allen said that attendees “lashed out” at each other as they faced an eight-hour wait to leave. “As usually happens in what Burners refer to as the ‘default world’ people allow their emotions to override their reasonableness and they are lashing out at each other as they leave the playa and attempt to make it to their next destination,” he told the 

Bahahahahahahaha sure Colin sure.

Originally a comment by Papito on Well ask yourself.

“As with any identity…”

It’s like this Wight is speaking backwards and inside out. He’s reifying a peculiar and uncommon interpretation of “identity.” Most of the other features he wants to conflate with gender identity lack this characteristic of having to be expressed and therefore signaled. Nobody has to express and signal their nationality unless they happen to be passing through immigration and customs at the airport, and we have passports for that. Likewise, nobody has to express and signal their actual sex – it’s still there whether they want to swing it around or not.

Wight’s concept that the trans-identifying male expresses himself through female gender stereotypes because that’s … Read the rest

No abaya in the state schools.

The French education minister has said that nearly 300 pupils arrived at school on Monday wearing the abaya, the long Muslim robe which was banned in schools last week.

Not just pupils; female pupils. It’s so BBC to omit that from the lede.

Most of the girls agreed to change into other clothes.

According to official figures, 298 girls – mainly aged 15 or more – turned up at school in the banned garment. Under instructions laid down by the ministry, there followed in each case a period of dialogue with school staff.

67 girls refused and were sent home. Next step is dialogue with the families; if that fails the girls will … Read the rest

And yet, does Peter ever post matching tweets telling us men and trans men are two different kinds of men? Does he ever say “Unite to defend ALL men, including trans”?

Trans women are trans women

They are not the same as biological women but they are equally valid

Two different kinds of women

One based on biological sex. One based on gender identity

Both victims of harassment & sexual violence

Unite to defend ALL women, including trans pic.twitter.com/qw8FQrR5gU

— Peter Tatchell (@PeterTatchell) September 5, 2023

… Read the rest

I’m finding this “identity” discussion Colin Wight is curating quite frustrating, because I can’t figure out what he means by “identity” and he keeps elaborating on it without saying what he means by it. I gather we’re all supposed to know, but I’m kind of allergic to things we’re all supposed to know (and act on, and respect, and so on) that can’t be defined.

Well ask yourself what a class identity is, or a National identity? It’s the same thing with gender. It can only mean you identify with/as the word proceeding it. So it would mean they identify with gender not sex. And gender is; the norms, values, expectations, roles, practices,…

— Colin Wight (@colwight) September 3, 2023

I don’t get this. I don’t think “identity” is real, and I don’t really get why other people do.

I don’t think I can describe myself as gender critical anymore (if I ever did). Gender identity is real. It’s as real as national identity, class identity, ethnic identity; any group identity you can think of. People identify with all sorts of things; their careers, their…

— Colin Wight (@colwight) September 3, 2023

I don’t think I can describe myself as gender critical anymore (if I ever did). Gender identity is real. It’s as real as national identity, class identity, ethnic identity; any group identity you can think of. People identify with all sorts of things; their careers, their families, their

What fresh hell is this?

Sure, chum, the fact that you say You Are A Safe Person means you absolutely are one and definitely not just saying you are one for nefarious purposes. This is a very excellent idea.

Also, notice that as usual women have no need of safety. Women are the people everyone else needs protection from.… Read the rest