Judge to Trump: No.

A New York judge has tossed out Donald Trump’s lawsuit against The New York Times, and ordered the former president to pay all attorneys fees, legal expenses, and associated costs.

Trump filed the lawsuit in 2021, alleging that the newspaper, three of its reporters and his niece Mary Trump engaged in an “insidious plot” to obtain his private records for a Pulitzer-winning story about his tax issues.

…

The twice-impeached former president’s claims against the defendants “fail as a matter of constitutional law,” New York Supreme Court Justice Robert R. Reed wrote in his ruling filed on Wednesday afternoon, deeming the paper’s newsgathering as being at “the very core of protected First Amendment activity.”

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Smoke and mirrors.

You gave us a “nutshell” summary with what was wrong with the Tavistock. Here’s a nutshell with what is wrong with trans activism:

None of the individuals who have been targeted, who include poets and authors as well as politicians, have called for legal rights to be removed from transgender people.

The framing is deliberate because the reality — forcing women to accept biological males in women’s sports, refuges, changing rooms, toilets and prisons — doesn’t sound so appealing.

Trans activists lie to conceal what their opponents say; they lie to conceal what exactly they are demanding. They rewrite the language to do both, launching their political … Read the rest

Trans-identifying man Jennifer Finney Boylan says sex is not in the body, it’s in the brain.

When someone says they feel like a woman, what exactly does that mean?

Nothing. It means nothing.

Or it means something, but the something it means is about fantasy and imagination; it’s not about material reality. We can think we “feel like” anything, and that can be a fine pathway to empathy and broader sympathies. It can be, but it can also be a lousy rotten stinking pathway to telling people you know more about being those people than they do.

Across the country, conservatives are insisting that — and legislating as if — “feeling” like a woman, or a man, is irrelevant.

Glinner is explaining to David Baddiel about peaking, and I saw this reply.

The bit about first you climb up believing all kinds of nonsense.

I never did actually believe it.

What did I do? Kept my mouth shut. Watched and waited. Avoided. Evaded. Bracketed. Ignored.

I guess to be more precise what I never did actually believe is that people are or can be the other sex, but I thought maybe possibly it could be that it’s to their benefit to pretend they can. I was far from passionately convinced even of that, but I thought it might be the case, and that I didn’t know much about it.

So I just kept quiet about it for several … Read the rest

“For all the hypersensitive whiny little cis women”

Do you think @MattWalshBlog could answer this person’s question, because she’s really baffled me. pic.twitter.com/02E6o9afML

— Dr. Jebra Faushay (@JebraFaushay) May 2, 2023

Summing up – “You know because womanhood, it doesn’t really have a meaning – you know it’s kind of what you want it to mean – it’s a social construct – I know that’s complicated for y’all”… Read the rest

A piquant NY Times headline:

Carlson’s Text That Alarmed Fox Leaders: ‘It’s Not How White Men Fight’

A text message sent by Tucker Carlson that set off a panic at the highest levels of Fox on the eve of its billion-dollar defamation trial showed its most popular host sharing his private, inflammatory views about violence and race.

The discovery of the message contributed to a chain of events that ultimately led to Mr. Carlson’s firing.

His views aren’t all that private.

In the message, sent to one of his producers in the hours after violent Trump supporters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, Mr. Carlson described how he had recently watched a video of a group of men —

Joan Smith notes politicians’ refusal to stand up for Joanna Cherry.

Starmer is a KC, like Cherry, and leading lawyers have spoken out about the decision to cancel her appearance at The Stand. Roddy Dunlop KC, Dean of the Faculty of Advocates, wrote on Twitter the decision was “plainly unlawful”. Michael Foran, lecturer in law at the University of Glasgow, agreed that it was “unlawful discrimination”. 

Such things should not be happening in a democratic country, governed by the rule of law. On this occasion, the venue has put out a mealy-mouthed statement, blaming the cancellation on the fact that a number of key staff, including management and box office personnel, “are unwilling to work on this event”. They

Lauren Smith at Spiked tells us:

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has ordered the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust to release details of its communication with Mermaids. In 2021, a concerned parent made a Freedom of Information request to see what, if any, correspondence there had been between the Tavistock and Mermaids – including emails or minutes of meetings. Initially, the Tavistock refused to comply, arguing that doing so would cause ‘a disproportionate or unjustified level of disruption, irritation or distress’. When the ICO asked the Tavistock to justify its refusal, the Tavistock took back its original excuse and instead claimed that there was no relevant information to hand over.

I’m fascinated to learn that the Tavistock thinks … Read the rest

MPs acting like high school bullies. In public.

pic.twitter.com/5INUOOeBlZ

— Emma Roddick MSP (@EmmaRoddickSNP) May 2, 2023

They’re snickering about Joanna Cherry.

If you really think that’s an appropriate and professional response by the minister for equalities towards a member of your own party, I shudder to think what treatment you mete out to others. You are an embarrassment to women, to your party and to Scotland.

— Jane McLenachan (@jane_mclenachan) May 2, 2023

Yeah you know J Cherry was in actual fact cancelled from speaking at the comedy club by activists self-appointing as the thought and speech police? This is an uncontestable truth that no pathetic diversions changes. More people are onto this stasi like behaviour every day.

—

The Sydney Morning Herald is distraught because a man is not allowed to join a women’s basketball team.

Transgender athlete Lexi Rodgers will be given advice and support by Basketball Australia if she chooses to reapply to join a women’s semi-professional league after her application was denied on Tuesday.

That is, a man who claims to be a woman will be given advice and support by Basketball Australia if he chooses to reapply to join a women’s semi-professional league after his application was denied on Tuesday.

Why? Why should he be given advice and support? He shouldn’t be trying to join a women’s league in the first place. Tell him to knock it off and go away. Support the women… Read the rest

Australia v women part 2.

In the article targeted by the eSafety Commissioner, Reduxx had revealed that Dennis was one of as many as five trans-identified male players currently competing against women in Football New South Wales competitions. An initial report from The Daily Mail Australia had chosen not to identify him when reporting on the injuries he was alleged to have caused, censoring images of him and declining to provide his name.

Thus making it easier for Riley Dennis to continue injuring women, and making it harder for women to know how to avoid injury from him. Protect the man doing the injuring at the expense of the women being injured – outstanding police work there chief!

In

Now we’re not allowed to talk about it. Genevieve Gluck at Reduxx:

An Australian woman was reported to police after making posts on social media about a male who identifies as transgender participating in the women’s football league. Kirralie Smith was visited by New South Wales Police after speaking to media about Riley Dennis, a trans activist who had been the subject of mass complaint last month after reportedly injuring female players.

Police visited Smith on March 30 and handed her an Apprehended Violence Order (AVO) requiring that she does not discuss or approach Dennis – despite the fact that Smith lives over 200 miles from Dennis. The AVO acts as an interim order that will stand until a

The Times has more on Killips’s cheating.

A victory by a transgender cyclist in an elite women’s race has prompted renewed criticism of the UCI’s eligibility rules.

Austin Killips took the title of “Queen of the Mountains” after winning the Tour of the Gila in the United States, a five-stage race that is sanctioned by the UCI, cycling’s international governing body. It is the biggest cycle race won by a transgender rider so far.

Unlike swimming or athletics, the UCI permits trans women who have gone through male puberty to take part in elite women’s events if they have had reduced testosterone levels of 2.5 nanomoles per litre for the previous two years (men usually have ten to 35nmol/l,

Oliver Brown at The Telegraph on the latest outrage:

In what has been described as a “Lia Thomas moment” for cycling, Austin Killips, a 27-year-old transgender rider, has won first prize for women at the Tour of the Gila, the premier road race in New Mexico.

It marked the most significant result yet for Killips, a trans-identifying biological male from Chicago, who also won a medal in women’s cyclo-cross at the US National Championships and who is now tipped to challenge for a place at the Tour de France Femmes and at next summer’s Paris Olympics.

Another man steals another prize from women, and hopes to steal more.

This year’s running of the Tour of the Gila marked the

Dear _____, it has come to our attention that there is a show going on next month in your basement showcasing three women. Why is this being allowed in your venue? Why did you not seek our permission before inviting these witches to say words? Who do you think you are? Who do they think they are?

The Inquisitor General will be paying you a visit shortly. Have all your papers ready.

It’s like mission creep on steroids, or to put it another way, it’s like doing the opposite of your mission while pretending to be still doing the mission. It’s flashing a surface version of the existing mission while in reality throwing the mission out of a window at the top of the Burj Khalifa.

The WI’s new incloosion policy is what I mean.

I wonder who came up with it, and forced it on the entire organization. I wonder how much dissent and fury there was. I wonder how many women left. I wonder why the people who did this thought it was necessary. I wonder why guilt and shame didn’t stop them.

Why have a women’s institute at all … Read the rest

Yes sure it’s fine for staff to refuse to work if Those People are on the premises.

So, like this?

The Women’s Institute has a new Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Policy as of this month.

NFWI Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Policy

1. Introduction
   The WI was founded on democratic ideals over 100 years ago and this commitment
   to equality is still central to our ethos today. The WI – the UK’s largest women’s
   membership organisation – is an inclusive, welcoming, supportive and progressive
   organisation for all women who live as women, including transgender women.

So there you go. It’s explicitly spelled out. Women are people who “live as women” and that includes men. It also excludes a fuck of a lot of women.

WI membership is open to all women who live as women, including transgender
women. The WI welcomes and

Stephen Daisley at the Spectator notes that trans ideology is more religion than it is political activism.

The censoring of Adult Human Female dramatises a tension between how progressives see themselves and the material reality of their ideology. By progressive, I don’t mean left-wing or radical in the traditional sense, but a political inclination that crosses party lines and places inordinate emphasis on identity, language, subjectivity and emotional fragility.

Especially emotional fragility. Trans people – especially trans women, i.e. men – are framed as crystal-like in their fragility. Maudlin anguish flows everywhere at the possibility that a trans woman might have to hear the word “No.”

These impulses are sometimes conflated with wokeness but I prefer the term ‘coercive progressivism’

Another day another burn the witch!! cancel the woman!!

Staff politics is not an excuse in law to cancel an event. If it were, imagine the trauma political parties would face trying to arrange conferences!

Still, @StandComedyClub might like to heed a couple of expensive examples. https://t.co/Mk8peWVOXL

— For Women Scotland (@ForWomenScot) May 1, 2023

Exclusive: Feminist MP @joannaccherry has been ‘no-platformed’ by a popular Edinburgh Fringe venuehttps://t.co/sTYiZGoNLd

— TimesEditorScotland (@magnusllewellin) May 1, 2023

Let’s read the Times article.

An event featuring a prominent MP who has been outspoken in the bitter debate about trans rights has been cancelled by the Edinburgh Fringe’s biggest comedy club.

Joanna Cherry was due to take part in an “In conversation with