How sad, it turns out that calling women too posh and too old doesn’t make people think you’re a good bloke despite the sexual harassment.

Outrage over Gregg Wallace’s alleged conduct has intensified after he dismissed his accusers as “middle-class women of a certain age”, following revelations that the BBC received multiple complaints about him over a period of 12 years.

The corporation and other broadcasters are facing growing questions about how the MasterChef presenter was allowed to remain on screen despite a series of allegations of inappropriate behaviour dating back to at least 2012.

It’s a real puzzler. Could it be because there are lots of people – well, lots of men anyway – who love brash … Read the rest

It’s real; I checked.

Future generations will wonder why we allowed men with the name 'Faux nee Phish' to read to children. pic.twitter.com/UBJpl9IqmG

— Gay Not Queer (@Gaynotqueer1) December 1, 2024

The screenshot is of a Facebook post, which is alive and kicking and hiding all comments that don’t say “How fabulous!!!!!!” The page is the “Official Facebook page for the public libraries in Canberra and the ACT Heritage Library.” Isn’t that nice? Public libraries in Canberra think it’s hilarious to teach children that women are fish. Public libraries in Canberra think it’s hilarious to teach children that “jokes” about women smelling like fish are totally awesome and riotously funny. Public libraries in Canberra think it’s hilarious to invite … Read the rest

Apparently, according to the headlines, with all due caution, the most popular movie on Netflix at this time is titled “Hot Frosty” and the plot summary (one of them anyway) is…

Widow Kathy magically brings a snowman to life. His innocence helps her heal and find love again. They bond before the holidays, but he’s doomed to melt.

You’re welcome.… Read the rest

Guy accused of sexist behavior blames those stupid old middle-class bitches.

Gregg Wallace hits out at insults ‘handful’ of accusers

Gregg Wallace has hit back at rejected allegations of historic misconduct, saying they have come from a “handful of middle-class women of a certain age”.

For the umpteenth time: adult journalists need to stop translating rude words into “hitting out at” or “hitting back” or any other form of hitting. Saying is not hitting, and news organizations should be careful not to use metaphors recklessly. Poetic license is all very well but BBC News is not a poet.

That said – the guy is obviously a shit. Oh no, women dare to be middle-class and over 30 – the nerve … Read the rest

The other day I fumed about Amnesty’s siding with the Scottish Ministers instead of For Women Scotland; so did JKR.

A truly despicable move from a once-respected human rights organisation, which now openly champions the elitist, first world notion of 'gender identity' over biological sex, the basis on which females across the globe are oppressed. https://t.co/rsXOYeVGo9

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) November 25, 2024

Seriously.

Eventually, there will be many studies surrounding how human rights organizations forgot that women are also humans with specific human rights.

— Sall Grover (@salltweets) November 26, 2024

.@amnesty has made it abundantly clear that they hate women. pic.twitter.com/XKdOTphVMY

— Genevieve Gluck (@WomenReadWomen) November 26, 2024

… Read the rest

ABC News (the one in Australia) reports:

For many National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) participants, a federal government decision means they can no longer access sexual services funding under the system, or they could risk financial pressure.

Sydneysider Oliver Morton-Evans says this decision has been “deeply disappointing” for many who live with a disability, including himself. “Now, only those who are financially well-off in the disability community can afford this service by paying out of pocket,” he said.

Whereas instead the government should be paying for this “service”? Because access to women’s bodies or at least hands is a human right?

Throughout times in his life, Mr Morton-Evans has sought the services of sex workers. He described it as

Woman who writes a column for the Washington Post tells women to shut up and take it.

Competition is never equal, and it is only sort of, approximately, occasionally fair. The best we can ask is that it be meaningful, that it teach us something about ourselves. This is the context in which transgender athletes enter into sport, and the people who would reduce this self-seeking to an unfair “them” against “us” are missing the point entirely: Sport doesn’t tell us who we are biologically, but spiritually, and psychologically, and the first thing it tells us is not to be victims. So it’s a step backward for so many women athletes to cry frailty in the debate over trans

Newsweek says Biden should have arrested Trump on January 21, 2021.

[B]y failing to arrest Trump immediately, Biden allowed the seriousness of Trump’s treasonous acts to diminish in the public’s collective memory, granting Trump’s supporters and others who might be swayed to his side the chance to believe that it was an open question as to whether or not he’d engaged in insurrection (when it definitely was not). It allowed the media, too, to make it seem like less than a fact, engaging in the usual horserace political coverage once it was election season, even though one of the candidates was a would-be usurper.

It’s true. Trump paid no real price for that mind-bogglingly serious crime, and now four years … Read the rest

The Sun reviews Smoggie Queens, hijinks ensue.

CALL me a wide-eyed optimist, if you like, but when a second female impersonator joined EastEnders this month, I thought: “Surely to God, we’ve reached peak drag queen and the BBC can find another obsession now.”

These men are across ­absolutely everything, after all, starting with four different versions of Ru Paul’s global abomination, which the Beeb has got on a loop.

Yes but the Beeb is every bit as obsessed with minstrel shows oh wait no it’s not. Mocking and insulting people of color is unacceptable but mocking and insulting women is wholesome every day entertainment. Right?

Smoggie Queens is up there with the worst ­sitcoms I’ve ever watched, which shouldn’t

No actually let’s not bring back blasphemy laws.

A truly black moment for Britain to hear a prime minister effectively endorse the idea that we should reintroduce blasphemy laws. https://t.co/BmVvSZQ7og

— Matt Ridley (@mattwridley) November 27, 2024

… Read the rest

Humanists UK stands up for blasphemy.

A poster advertising comedian Fern Brady’s tour is ‘sacrilegious’, according to a complaint received by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA). Given ASA rules, this complaint could lead to the comedy poster being banned.

Humanists UK is concerned that the ASA will ban the poster on grounds of causing religious offence, as it has with similar adverts in the past. It says that doing so amounts to a de facto anti-blasphemy law, which is an unreasonable restriction on free expression.

To put it mildly. If blasphemy is forbidden then we can’t point out that old stories about gods and devils and angels are just that: old stories. We need to be able to distinguish … Read the rest

BBC trolling us:

The BBC pundit Sharron Davies has joined forces with a leading human rights charity in accusing the national broadcaster of potentially casting a shadow over next month’s Sports Personality of the Year (Spoty) event by naming Barbra Banda as their women’s footballer of the year.

The BBC was the subject of widespread criticism on Tuesday after announcing that a player banned from the 2022 Women’s Africa Cup of Nations for elevated testosterone levels had received its coveted award.

See that will be why the Beeb did it. Feminist women must be trolled and punished and generally shoved around.

Now Davies, the former Olympic swimmer who worked as the poolside reporter for the BBC at this year’s

Sally Hines thinks people in developing countries don’t know how to make babies.

I cannot stress how much JK R needs to do some reading on the historical and cultural context of sex. There’s a massive literature from across disciplines on how the binary model of biological sex is a ‘“first world” notion’. And of course Amnesty knows https://t.co/ckamYl4mAL

— Sally Hines (@sally_hines) November 27, 2024

There’s no stupidity like sophisticated academic stupidity. … Read the rest

Fiona McAnena last week on fairness in women’s sport:

The Football Association does not allow mixed football for adults. That is what it will tell you. But this month a 17-year-old girl was suspended for questioning the presence of a bearded man in the opposing team. That was an offence under the FA’s code of conduct because that man says he is a woman.

So which is it? You might think the FA should pick one and only one, but wait, there’s an escape clause. The bearded man is not a man, because he says he’s not. Bam, problem solved.

Since 2013, the FA has allowed male players who identify as transgender into women’s teams if they can show

Hmmmmm. It says “NHS inform” at the top. It shows other available languages. Surely the goal here is to inform patients. And yet…

The goal is surely to inform, and yet the NHS tells people, including people who don’t read English, that there are people who are not women or girls yet who “bleed from their vagina.” Well, what people? What people are those exactly? What people who are not women or girls have the ability to “bleed from their vagina”? Why don’t we all know about them? Why haven’t we all always known about them?

The NHS, let’s remember, is not the Guardian or the BBC, nor is it an activist on social media. The NHS is a health … Read the rest

Here NI is “a place for lesbian and bisexual women” in Belfast. Its most recent Facebook post, six hours ago:

One, it carefully omits “sex” from the “regardless of” bit. Two, the image is of a woman brandishing her fist at a cringing shaking man while shouting at him.

To repeat: it calls itself “a place for lesbian and bisexual women.” … Read the rest

Pretend-woman Robin Moira White in the Independent:

Today continues the Supreme Court hearing of the For Women Scotland v The Scottish Ministers appeal. Ostensibly, this case concerns guidance issued by the Scottish government about who can be considered for places on boards of public bodies in Scotland. In fact, it comes down to a dispute about the meaning of the word “sex” in the UK Equality Act 2010, the definition of “woman” and “man” under that act – and the place of trans people in our society.

As if you can change the realities of who is a woman and who is a man by passing an act. As if we don’t already know who is a woman and … Read the rest

From the New Republic:

Sargent: Indeed. I want to ask you about this idea of self-censorship under that pressure. You have some experience and insight with what happens inside The New York Times. You were public editor. How do you think editors and newsroom leaders experience criticism like this from Trump? Do they see it as something to worry about? Do they get anxious about being perceived as being biased against Trump? How does this sort of stuff register internally there?

Sullivan: There’s a real push and pull about it. Reporters want to do good stories. They’re not going after Trump, or it’s not really about their personal politics or whether the Times leans left or right. They want

Oliver Brown points out that women are entitled to think we’re being trolled.

The failure of Barbra Banda to meet sex eligibility rules is not in question: indeed, Andrew Kamanga, president of the Zambian football association, confirmed in 2022 the striker had not met the “gender verification criteria” and so could not compete in the Women’s Africa Cup of Nations. He gave this statement to the BBC. And so it is doubly extraordinary to discover that in 2024, Banda has just been anointed BBC Women’s Footballer of the Year.

The Confederation of African Football is one of the few major sporting bodies in recent years to have mandated sex testing. Fifa and the International Olympic Committee, by contrast,

Originally a comment by maddog on You’ve never been.

… because you’ve never been denied any area of expression, there’s a lot women take for granted. You’re not punished every time you act in a way that is feminine. You don’t know what it’s like to be forced into a lot of toxic male social dynamics that feel terrifying. You don’t know what it’s like to feel your brain malfunctioning on testosterone.

What a liar.

Women “have never been denied any area of expression”? In what world? Women have for centuries been, and continue to be, denied almost every form of expression until relatively recently, and then only partially permitted, and only in modern Western democratic countries. Women in … Read the rest