Moira Deeming issued a longer press statement about the Let Women Speak rally.

PRESS RELEASE MOIRA DEEMING LIBERAL MP – WESTERN METROPOLITAN REGION Personal statement: I have been informed that there will be a vote in the Liberal Party room to determine whether I should be allowed to remain or be expelled from the Parliamentary Party. Let me clear – I have done nothing wrong. Those who organised the Let Women Speak event on the weekend have done nothing wrong. Despite this, a select few members of the Liberal leadership team have condemned me unjustly. This is an inflection point for the Liberal Party in Victoria. There are two paths the Party must choose from. Does it accept the utterly

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Statement by Australian Senator Claire Chandler:

STATEMENT ON WOMEN’S SEX-BASED RIGHTS

The biggest fear of women and girls concerned about the loss of single-sex spaces, services and facilities is being forced to share space with violent, dangerous men.

There is no more dangerous or violent group than Nazis. This is an obvious fact confirmed repeatedly by warnings from security and intelligence services.

It is preposterous to suggest that women and girls fighting for the sex-based rights of women and concerned above all about male violence would want the most violent and dangerous men – Nazis – anywhere near a women’s rights event.

Over the last few years I have spoken to thousands of women concerned about laws which enable

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Woman cyclist driven out of the sport by men taking over.

https://twitter.com/AlisonSydor/status/1635394531368783872… Read the rest

Still in Melbourne:

NAZIS CRASH WOMEN'S RALLY IN MELBOURNE – questions raised re police behaviour

AJA unreservedly condemns the Nazis who invaded the rally. These ugly thugs saw an opportunity to hijack the event for their own publicity.
Odd policing – Trans activists stopped but Nazis allowed in. pic.twitter.com/GG0ZJ0NwJH

— Australian Jewish Association (@AustralianJA) March 19, 2023

https://twitter.com/deves_katherine/status/1637309980717244417 https://twitter.com/deves_katherine/status/1637288915647463424

Updating to add the Facebook version:

NAZIS CRASH WOMEN’S RALLY IN MELBOURNE – questions raised re police behaviour

Yesterday a “Let Women Speak” rally was held in Melbourne featuring visiting British women’s advocate Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull (also known as Posie Parker) as well as local women. This movement is concerned that biological men are undermining the integrity of women’s sport and spaces

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“Katy” Montgomerie is doing his usual sneer lie taunt routine.

https://twitter.com/KatyMontgomerie/status/1637099079661502470

It’s not a woman and he’s not being grabbed by the throat. It’s a man who stole the mic to prevent women from speaking at the Let Women Speak rally. Montgomerie just keeps repeating the lie over and over and over.

https://twitter.com/KatyMontgomerie/status/1637394397154222081

The man is a man, and he wasn’t invited and he grabbed the mic so another man stopped him. This is a man forcibly silencing women, not a woman subject to violence. Montgomerie gets off on this Repeat the Lie routine.

https://twitter.com/KatyMontgomerie/status/1637107178841468933

It’s not violence against women, it’s prevention of male violence against women. He’s not a woman but trans, he’s a man.

https://twitter.com/KatyMontgomerie/status/1637547256504090626

He’s … Read the rest

Not all that liberal.

An outspoken Victorian Liberal MP is set to be expelled from the party over her involvement in an anti-transgender rally attended by neo-Nazis.

Moira Deeming spoke at the “Let Women Speak” event held by British anti-trans activist Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull outside Victorian parliament on Saturday.

The wording is, as always, misleading. The label “anti-trans” implies (as it’s intended to, of course) that the Let Women Speak event was in opposition to trans people when it’s the ideology we reject. This obfuscation makes it sound maybe possibly almost reasonable to kick someone out of the Liberal party for attending.

A group of neo-Nazis joined the anti-trans demonstrators and repeatedly performed the Nazi salute, sparking violent clashes

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Wyoming makes abortion medication illegal:

The Wyoming bill, which was passed by the state’s Republican-controlled legislature earlier this month, makes it illegal to “prescribe, dispense, distribute, sell or use any drug for the purpose of procuring or performing an abortion”.

Women must not be allowed to plan their own lives. Women must be public property.

Wyoming American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) advocacy director Antonio Serrano criticised the bill, saying “a person’s health, not politics, should guide important medical decisions – including the decision to have an abortion”.

Nice of him to weaken his own criticism by saying “a person’s health” instead of a woman’s. Nice of him to delete women from the abortion issue as if it were … Read the rest

Maybe maybe just maybe trans ideology isn’t quite the red-hot vote-winner that its fans were thinking.

Labour must fix its stance on transgender issues to win the next election, Sir Keir Starmer has been told.

Senior figures within the party believe there is a need to clarify its policies on the issue and bring them closer in line with where the public is.

They’re alarmed by Nicola Sturgeon’s crashing and burning.

Figures within Labour believe their policies must not fall into a similar trap whereby “in trying to do good for a very small minority group, you inadvertently offend an awful lot of women who feel their place in society is being eliminated. You have to balance the needs

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Trump did a thing in 2018…

President Donald Trump signed the biggest rollback of bank regulations since the global financial crisis into law Thursday.

The measure designed to ease rules on all but the largest banks passed both chambers of Congress with bipartisan support. Backers say the legislation will lift burdens unnecessarily put on small and medium-sized lenders by the Dodd-Frank financial reform act and boost economic growth.

Opponents, however, have argued the changes could open taxpayers to more liability if the financial system collapses or increase the chances of discrimination in mortgage lending.

Cough Silicon cough Valley cough Bank cough

The measure eases restrictions on all but the largest banks. It raises the threshold to $250 billion

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Poor Trump, no one tells him anything, he has to get his information from the news media like any other shlub.

Donald Trump says he expects to be arrested on Tuesday and has urged his supporters to launch mass protests.

However his lawyer said there had been no communication from law enforcement and the former president’s post was based on media reports.

And gossip, don’t forget gossip.

The district attorney’s office has not yet commented. Mr Trump’s lawyer, Susan Necheles, said her team had not heard anything from law enforcement officials.

“Since this is a political prosecution, the district attorney’s office has engaged in a practice of leaking everything to the press, rather than communicating with President Trump’s attorneys

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Very enlightening piece by Jonathan Haidt about the rise in depression among girls and how catastrophizing is involved.

In May 2014, Greg Lukianoff invited me to lunch to talk about something he was seeing on college campuses that disturbed him. Greg is the president of FIRE (the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression), and he has worked tirelessly since 2001 to defend the free speech rights of college students. That almost always meant pushing back against administrators who didn’t want students to cause trouble, and who justified their suppression of speech with appeals to the emotional “safety” of students—appeals that the students themselves didn’t buy. But in late 2013, Greg began to encounter new cases in which students were

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Well it’s none of my business but the Guardian saw fit to publish an article about it so I guess that makes it everyone’s business.

Jon Snow ‘at complete ease’ with becoming a father again in his 70s

The broadcaster, 75, and his wife, the academic Precious Lunga, 48, welcomed a baby boy via a surrogate in March 2021 after struggling with “medical setbacks and miscarriages”.

“Via a surrogate”=a different woman did the work of gestation and pushing out.

Snow elaborated:

“I haven’t found age relevant to my relationship with my son or grandsons. Is being a grandad different to being a dad? Not really. In the end, it’s all love, isn’t it?”

Yes but that’s not the issue. The … Read the rest

Pink News sees a fistfight where there isn’t one:

Oxfam hits back at critics of trans-inclusive guidance who claim its ‘erasing mums and dads’

No it doesn’t “hit back,” because nobody “hit” in the first place. Saying words is not hitting. Oxfam responded or reacted or issued a statement; it didn’t “hit.” Nobody “hit” Oxfam.

Also, why “mums and dads” instead of mothers and fathers? Why not treat the readers like adults?

The 92-page toolkit offers advice on how to engage with different groups of people which Oxfam staff and volunteers might come into contact with, including people with a disability, sex workers and the LGBTQ+ community.  

But not women, of course. Women don’t matter. Women aren’t worth mentioning. Women … Read the rest

Trump’s lawyer says he’ll surrender if he’s indicted. Very big of him I’m sure. The lawyer didn’t mention that he would also incite his worshipers to riot.

Former President Donald Trump will surrender to face criminal charges if indicted by a Manhattan grand jury, his lawyer said Friday evening.

…

Trump is under investigation by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office for his company recording as legal expenses a reimbursement to his former personal attorney Michael Cohen for $130,000 he gave porn star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election to keep her quiet about an alleged sexual tryst with Trump.

Trump is living at his Florida club these days.

Under Florida law, the state’s governor is responsible for making

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Speaking of Trump about to be arrested, he also failed to report a quarter of a million dollars worth of prezzies from foreign governments.

Donald Trump’s White House failed to report more than 100 gifts from foreign nations worth more than a quarter-million dollars, according to a US government report, and several of those gifts – including a lifesize painting of Trump given by the president of El Salvador and golf clubs from the prime minister of Japan – are still unaccounted for.

The revelations came as part of a report on Friday from Democrats on the House Oversight Committee. The report details numerous unreported items, among them 16 gifts from Saudi Arabia worth more than $45,000 in all,

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Trump is expecting to be arrested next Tuesday and is inciting violence in response.

https://twitter.com/kyledcheney/status/1637054382154891264

“TAKE OUR NATION BACK” is pure January 6.… Read the rest

Not how to teach science:

https://twitter.com/theAliceRoberts/status/1637028796346793985

They deleted it.

https://twitter.com/theAliceRoberts/status/1637033334034378754

Too bad she has faith that men can be women.… Read the rest

BBC insults women some more.

The BBC has rejected viewer complaints about the trans rapist Isla Bryson being referred to as a woman on a Scottish news programme. The corporation’s executive complaints unit (ECU) launched an investigation after concerns were raised about how Bryson was described in coverage of his conviction for raping two women.

…

A presenter said: “A woman has been found guilty of raping two women prior to changing her gender. 31-year-old Isla Bryson carried out the attacks in Clydebank and Glasgow in 2016 and 2019 while known as a man called Adam Graham. Bryson now identifies as a woman and is in the process of starting gender reassignment.”

Rubbing our noses in it. They didn’t … Read the rest

Originally a comment by Screechy Monkey at Miscellany Room.

The point of laws like this TN one is to intimidate people and chill expression, and this very thread demonstrates how.

Oh, the law doesn’t specifically say that all drag performances are illegal, only ones that appeal to a prurient interest! And who could be against performances of a prurient interest where CHILDREN might see it? (Won’t somebody think of the children?)

Except what makes something an “appeal to a prurient interest”? Yes, it’s a phrase used in obscenity law, so it has some legal meaning, but obscenity has other requirements that limit its applicability, and even with those it’s still a bit of a dangerously fuzzy concept.

And here … Read the rest

The Federalist Society is grappling with the always-grappled-with conundrum of democracy versus rights (or democracy versus law, democracy versus principles, democracy versus charters). Democracy is more fair and just than dictatorship or monarchy, but then what about democracies that persecute minorities? What do you do when the majority is all for violating human rights?

This year’s gathering was even more important than most. As the first student symposium since the Supreme Court handed conservatives a historic package of victories on gun rights, religious freedom, environmental deregulation, and, of course, abortion, the weekend offered a window into the shifting priorities and preoccupations of the youngest and most elite members of the conservative legal movement, at a time

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