All entries by this author
Oct 20th, 2022 2:26 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Unbelievable.
“Freedom of expression is a fundamental principle which we wholeheartedly support
…
…
HOWEVER”
It’s as if stupidity is an erupting volcano, and the lava is slowly but steadily swallowing everything. Every single last thing.
[Caius by the way is pronounced Keys]… Read the rest
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1 Comment »
Oct 19th, 2022 2:58 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
This is the really breathtaking bit – the brand new CEO of the hospital telling the patient “we don’t share your beliefs so we’ve decided not to do your surgery.”
I think she might very well get fired for that, and perhaps more than fired.
It’s a quite incredible thing to say – to put in writing. I think it screams lawsuit.… Read the rest
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5 comments
Oct 19th, 2022 2:40 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
Of course Raw Story can’t report it honestly.
A North Carolina school district has decided to halt all future competition with one of its school’s female volleyball teams after a trans player allegedly injured a player on an opposing team, The National Desk reports.
A male player injured a female player.
A trans player on the Highlands School volleyball team reportedly spike the ball hard at a girl on the opposing team, hitting her in the face and giving her “severe head and neck injuries, resulting in long-term concussion symptoms,” according to the Education First Alliance.
A male player did that. The issue isn’t that he’s trans, it’s that he’s male. Trans is the reason he was … Read the rest
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3 comments
Oct 19th, 2022 2:18 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
It’s public information who the CEO of Princess Grace Hospital is.
HCA Healthcare UK has appointed Maxine Estop Green (pictured) as [CEO] of The Princess Grace Hospital, with effect from 3 October.
She’s a brand new CEO and one of the first things she does is tell a critically ill patient “we don’t like your values so we’re not going to do your necessary surgery.”
Estop Green’s 22-year career in the private healthcare sector began at the turn of the century in finance management at Ramsay Healthcare.
Cool cool cool. All about the money; not about the patients. Awesome.
Estop Green added she was “beyond excited“ to step into the role of CEO at The Princess Grace Hospital and said
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3 comments
Oct 19th, 2022 1:57 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
ripX4nutmeg at Glinner update reports on a hospital nightmare:
In one of the most shocking stories yet, a London hospital has cancelled a woman’s life-saving operation at the last minute because it doesn’t ‘share her values’. That ‘value’ she had was that she wanted the aftercare nurses to be female.
Former solicitor Teresa needs urgent, rare and highly complex, colorectal surgery. She selected the private Princess Grace Hospital, which specialises in women’s healthcare, for it specifically because she didn’t want to be in a mixed-sex facility.
A victim of sexual assaults, Teresa made it clear to the hospital how important this issue was to her, by both requesting a single-sex room and bathroom, and stating she would only
…
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22 comments
Oct 19th, 2022 11:28 am |
By Ophelia Benson
A thing that calls itself a rape and sexual abuse counselling centre changes the subject to…pronouns. I guess rape and sexual abuse are so trivial that something more serious was needed?
Replies are closed. Retweets are hostile.… Read the rest
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
4 comments
Oct 19th, 2022 10:06 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Where oh where oh where are the adults? Where did they all go? What are they doing? Why are they hiding? When will they get a fucking grip?
First the boring obvious for the millionth time: there’s no such thing as “people’s chosen pronouns” because people don’t get to “choose” special personal meanings for public language.
Much more to the point, humoring people about “their pronouns” absolutely does not affirm human dignity, it treats people as if … Read the rest
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6 comments
Oct 19th, 2022 9:10 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Billy Bragg writes in the New Statesman about how “reactionary” people have to be accountable, apparently to people like for instance Billy Bragg.
When pressed on whether his idea of accountability included the abuse suffered by JK Rowling following her statements on trans women, [Graham] Norton suggested that it might be more illuminating to talk to trans children and their parents, rather than merely amplifying the opinions of a celebrity or author – even a very good one.
Says a celebrity writing in the New Statesman, which he probably wouldn’t be able to do if he weren’t a celebrity.
But more to the point: what are “trans children”?
What if there are no “trans children,” but only children swept … Read the rest
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2 comments
Oct 19th, 2022 3:30 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Victoria Smith in The Critic:
Self-censorship is like housework: the vast majority of it is done by women, and men only notice when they think we’ve missed a bit.
She’s writing about Graham Norton and his ill-informed views on JK Rowling, but of course the pattern is ubiquitous.
This is true not just about discussions of sex and gender, but female experience both in the home and in public space: there is so much we do not say, to which men remain completely oblivious. They do not appreciate all our silences, all our accommodations. All they notice are the inconvenient truths we do choose to utter. For those, we are damned.
One comfort here is that that makes being … Read the rest
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6 comments
Oct 19th, 2022 2:48 am |
By Ophelia Benson
But we were told this never happens.
A woman was allegedly raped by a sex offender at a women’s shelter in Ontario, Canada after the predator identified as transgender in order to gain access to the facility.
Shane Jacob Green, 25, was arrested on August 24 by Ontario Provincial Police (OPP). At the time, the OPP issued a notice stating Green had been charged with two counts of sexual assault, four counts of failing to comply with a probation order, and one count of failing to comply with a release order.
But new details have emerged through the Toronto Sun revealing that Green’s crimes occurred while he was staying in a women’s emergency shelter in Parry Sound.
He’d already … Read the rest
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7 comments
Oct 18th, 2022 5:21 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
Primum non nocere.
There’s so much wrong with this one tweet from an ACLU lawyer.
One thing wrong with it is that trying to change people’s sex isn’t “medical care.” Even if it treats something (misery, anxiety, self-hatred) it isn’t medical – it doesn’t cure any illness or mend any bone. I don’t know exactly what it should be called, but I think “medical care” is way too misleading, not … Read the rest
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10 comments
Oct 18th, 2022 11:14 am |
By Ophelia Benson
And speaking of Saudi Arabia and grotesque levels of suppression and punitive absence of rights, meet Ron DeSantis’s Florida:
I stopped breathing while watching this clip. You know how you do, in shock and disbelief? Like that.
The Tampa Bay Times has details:
When police went to arrest Tony Patterson outside his Tampa home in August, he couldn’t believe the reason.
“What is wrong with this state, man?” Patterson protested as he was being escorted to a police car in handcuffs. “Voter fraud? Y’all said anybody with a felony could vote, man.”
Body-worn camera footage recorded by local police captured the confusion and outrage of Hillsborough County
…
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7 comments
Oct 18th, 2022 10:44 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Whichaya gonna choose, human rights or the ability to gas up the ol’ SUV every couple of days?
It’s the SUV every time, of course.
A US national held in Saudi Arabia has received a 16-year jail sentence for writing tweets critical of the government, his son has told the BBC.
Saad Ibrahim Almadi, 72, who also has Saudi citizenship, was arrested in November after he travelled from Florida to Riyadh to see his family. His son has now spoken out for the first time publicly, going against what he says has been US official advice.
Ibrahim Almadi said he did not want to see his father die in prison. He alleged that Saad had been held in conditions
…
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Oct 18th, 2022 9:29 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Even Amnesty International stopped short of calling it a right, in fact it explicitly disavowed calling it a right.
Amnesty International has formally adopted a policy calling for the decriminalisation of adult sex work and repeal of most laws around the world controlling prostitution.
The organisation’s stance on protecting sex workers is set out in a global programme published on Thursday that draws on fresh research about the industry in Argentina, Hong Kong, Papua New Guinea and Norway.
“This policy does not argue that there is a human right to buy sex or a human right to financially benefit from the sale of sex by another person,” Amnesty said. “Rather, it calls for sex workers to be protected from
…
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17 comments
Oct 18th, 2022 4:17 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Oh good, another man reports on a man in charge of a rape crisis center and the evil women who don’t want men running rape crisis centers. The man reporting is Adam Ramsay at Open Democracy, and the man in charge of the rape crisis center is Mridul Wadhwa. Adam Ramsay just can’t say enough about how evil these women are for objecting to men forcing their way into women’s spaces.
Warning: this piece discusses transphobia.
Warning: this piece is hostile to women.
“It’s only recently that I’ve really stopped looking over my shoulder or not thinking actively that I could be harmed,” Mridul Wadhwa, the [Edinburgh] centre’s director, told us. “But that doesn’t mean that I don’t think I
…
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10 comments
Oct 17th, 2022 6:42 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
Dammit.
An Iranian athlete who made headlines for refusing to wear a hijab while competing overseas has reportedly gone missing.
Elnaz Rekabi, 33, shunned the Islamic Republic’s restrictions while representing her country at the Asian Sport Climbing Championships in Seoul on Sunday.
Sources close to Rekabi told the BBC that they had been unable to contact her since Monday night.
I was listening to BBC World Service just now and they reported that she’s on a plane bound for Tehran, and the betting is she’ll be arrested on arrival.
All because she doesn’t wear a fucking blanket over her head while climbing a rock wall.… Read the rest
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog
Oct 17th, 2022 5:40 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
Another friendship broken over the endlessly escalating demands of trans ideology:
A schism has erupted in environmental politics after the Scottish Greens voted to cut ties with the UK party over claims of “trans abuse”.
Meaning abuse that identifies as abuse but is actually just a non-conforming opinion?
Members overwhelmingly backed a motion to suspend “formal association” with the Green Party in England and Wales on the second day of their Scottish party’s conference in Dundee.
Terfs in the sugar bowl was it?
The Rainbow Greens, a group representing LGBTQ+ members of the Scottish Greens, submitted the motion, accusing the Greens of “transphobic bigotry”, “homophobic bigotry” and disrespecting the devolution settlement.
I’m beginning to wonder of Scottish trans … Read the rest
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