First of all, what is Forbes Power Women’s Summit? I’d never heard of it so I had to look it up. (It’s tricky trying to figure out the grammar. Is it a summit for power women? If so, what are power women? Is it a women’s summit organized by Forbes Power? If so, what is Forbes power? Is there a third option?) Google explains all:

In 2013, Moira [Forbes] launched the annual Forbes Women’s Summit in New York City, which brings together 250 female leaders to discuss and solve the world’s most intractable issues.

I don’t know or care who Moira Forbes may be, but at least we know where we are. It’s some kind of corporate jamboree for women. … Read the rest

It’s physical.

So apparently "nobody's saying lesbians have to sleep with TW" yet approx 30 aggressive TRAs have managed to get the #LesbianStrength march cancelled for the women's safety. Sexist behaviour from the police. Arrest the aggressors!

— Wicked Willow (@WickedWillow02) September 17, 2022

But. It seems the aggression failed.

And we are off#LesbianStrength2022 pic.twitter.com/nLMS4xMvLN

— LesbianStrength (@StrengthLesbian) September 17, 2022

Our first speaker Jo, is talking about growing up as a 'tomboy' GNC as all of us are. And very proud to be so #LesbianStrength2022

— LesbianStrength (@StrengthLesbian) September 17, 2022

Updating to add more snaps:

The homophobes #LesbianStrength2022 pic.twitter.com/01BrZhb6J2

— JoJoBucks (@JocastaMoney) September 17, 2022

… Read the rest

More on the Leeds march:

In a few hours we will be off to Leeds for the Lesbian Strength Rally. Thank you for all the goodwill messages we have received. A big thank you for today goes to the @StrengthLesbian Team who have worked together for months so Lesbians can meet together & celebrate visability pic.twitter.com/wscFY0rQKr

— LesbianLabour (@LesbianLabour) September 17, 2022

THE CLANS ARE GATHERING#LesbianStrength20222

— LesbianStrength (@StrengthLesbian) September 17, 2022

That was 5 minutes before the march was due to start. Nothing since. I expect they’re way too busy working to uncancel the march to do any updating. Please tell us again how vulnerable trans women are.

Wait here’s something.

Yes West Yorks Police please do … Read the rest

Alarming development.

Saturday 17th September
2pm
City Square in Leeds will see an assembly of lesbians from far and wide proudly proclaiming that lesbians are exclusively same sex attracted and NOTHING can change that!#OutAndProud#LesbianNotQueer#LesbianStrength#LesbianStrength2022 pic.twitter.com/mzauNx1IYd

— LesbianStrength (@StrengthLesbian) September 13, 2022

That’s now. The march should be in progress. But

Hostile crowd of trans activists heading towards #LesbianStrength march in Leeds.
Fight homophobia, defend the rights of lesbians to express and celebrate same sex attraction. pic.twitter.com/kP5HP9UjhF

— Helen Steel (@helensteel12) September 17, 2022

https://twitter.com/drlouisejmoody/status/1571121082899505154

People are seeking confirmation.… Read the rest

A hot topic for today: a piece by Laura Favaro in the Times Higher about the tyranny of gender idenniny.

Warnings that the field was risky for an early career researcher to investigate came from scholars on all sides – from “gender-critical” feminists, who described being vilified and ostracised for stating that sex is binary and immutable, to those who saw that position as callous bigotry, or, moreover, “a genocidal project” (including journal editors thus endorsing censorship).

Some people warned of vilification and ostracism, others vilified and ostracized.

More than two years ago, I set out to find whether the warnings about entering this domain were justified, or, as others suggest, spurious claims made by those keen to spark

Marina Hyde notes the UK has toppled into absurdity:

In the wake of the Queen’s death, these moments of hopelessly unintentional, tenuously sane hilarity have surely been produced by the behaviour of any number of our commercial brands. Them and Nicholas Witchell, anyway. It’s been like a competition to see which retailer can act the most preposterously, the most self-regardingly, and with the most complete commitment to the twee.

Could it be Morrisons, announcing that it had turned down the volume of its till beeps “out of respect”? Could it be pawnshop chain Cash Converters formally announcing its self-seclusion from social media? Or could it be – and this one’s the correct answer – Center Parcs decreeing that holidaymakers

Consistency from one hour to the next; does OJ have it?

OJ tries to conceal his inconsistency (or should we call it pathological lying? if he can accuse us of pathological lying we can return the favor, yeah?) by not saying “the lesbians who were kicked out of Pride for stating that lesbians don’t like penises” but rather “anti-trans activists invaded a Pride march.” That’s not a very honest or forthright move, especially for a journalist, especially for a journalist who has just called a bunch of people “pathological liars.”

How can lesbians be said to be “invading” a Pride march? Why does OJ think he gets to tell lesbians they’re “invading” Pride? What is a “cis lesbian”? Why … Read the rest

Does Ted Cruz really think people are THAT stupid?

Now try 4.2 million. https://t.co/fvRmV0LGt2

— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) September 15, 2022

Now try 4.2 million, he says, to the 15,000 people who live on an island that is 87 square miles. Ted Cruz is a senator from a state that is 268,597 square miles with a population of 28 million.

Texas is bigger than France; Martha’s Vineyard is a third the size of Chicago.

Why would Ted Cruz try to illustrate the burden of immigration on Texas by comparing it to a tiny island with a tiny population?

Also:

@tedcruz realized that MA has a Republican Governor and decided to delete his earlier tweet. pic.twitter.com/RyrbPA559D

— Golfin' Bum (@GolfinBum) September

Hello and welcome to Pseuds’ Corner. Our guest today is a self-obsessed young person who would like to explain to us how special xir is.

Carla Hernando, 26, never quite felt like they fit into a particular gender. Then, when Covid-19 took hold in March 2020, they got a lot of alone time to reflect on their identity. The journey continued during Pride Month that June, when Hernando found both an article and a documentary on non-binary gender identities, by Time Out Barcelona, further opening their mind to possibilities beyond the gender binary of ‘woman’ or ‘man’.

I hope they also read up on non-human identities, to open their mind to possibilities beyond the human-chimpanzee binary.

“[Spain] is way

Oh yes, what could possibly go wrong?

More and more and MORE “gender affirming care” – more castrations, more hysterectomies, more mastectomies, more puberty blockers, more cross-gender hormones, and more and more and MORE. It’s all so pink and festive and fun.

Reduce those barriers! In fact actively encourage people to wreck their bodies for the sake of a mass delusion! What have you got to lose?… Read the rest

Oh good GRIEF.

“Don’t ask, don’t tell.“ pic.twitter.com/k4O5CU7gdG

— Helen Joyce (@HJoyceGender) September 15, 2022

The same way it impinges on his happiness, Owen, to KEEP IT A SECRET THAT HE IS GAY.… Read the rest

On a different (yet oddly similar in some ways) subject, John Kelly knew Trump is a psycho.

Donald Trump’s White House chief of staff secretly bought a book in which 27 mental health professionals warned that the president was psychologically unfit for the job, then used it as a guide in his attempts to cope with Trump’s irrational behavior.

News of John Kelly’s surreptitious purchase comes in a new book from Peter Baker of the New York Times and Susan Glasser of the New Yorker. The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021, will be published next week. The Guardian obtained a copy.

…

[Kelly’s] struggles to impose order on Trump and his underlings and his virulent falling

Onward again.

[As always I tweak the transcript to expand abbreviations and supply missing words and punctuation and so on, as it’s done at speed without technical aids.]

MG: moving on to LGBA attitude to Mermaids. Page 232 

MG: You deny trying to deprive Mermaids of funding or attack on their fund raising efforts.

KH: yes.

MG: You appreciate my client takes a different view. Turn back to vol 2.2. This time at 1136 and what LGBTA says here, tweet dated May 5 2020 ‘profound homophobia at heart of GI’ that’s straight attack, undermine Mermaids.

KM: straight attempt to say all these groups are displaying profound homophobia.
MG: it’s gender propaganda?
KH: [reads] statement full of feeling. Feeling behind is

Onward.

We restart.

EJ: please sit. Kate Harris are you all right to continue?

KH: yes

MG: I apologise if I said something upsetting. I’ll put the question in brief way for a yes/no. You’d accept others use words such as SE differently to you. Or lesbian for that matter. 

I don’t know what the E in SE is an abbreviation for; it’s not in the list of abbreviations at the top. Expression doesn’t make any sense and I don’t know what else it could be. I don’t know why it’s not SO for sexual orientation. Anyway, the important thing is Kate Harris’s response.

KH: my good friend Allison Bailey said the word lesbian is taken. The word is

Powerful stuff at the tribunal this morning.

EJ: good morning AR. Peace has descended and we hope no further interruption. Good Morning everyone. Carry on where we left off Michael Gibbon KC lawyer for Mermaids.

MG: morning. Just remind where we got to. We were talking about looking at that doc, particular words and phrases, reference to sexual orientation, adversity to gay and bisexuality people, later discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation. No mention of GC view? 

Kate Harris [of LGBA]: that’s correct. IS will know our app to the Charity Commission took a year. No criticism. Comes between lawyers and CC, the difference between us and other is the emphasis on the centrality of differences between men and

What’s wrong with this claim?

"Doesn't matter if you think I'm philosophically a woman or not really, what matters is I'm a woman in practice."

Monty really has earned an award for services to comedy. pic.twitter.com/p7hk2KlS8P

— FeministRoar (@FeministRoar) September 15, 2022

How does one be a woman “philosophically”? I suppose he means ontologically. How does one be a woman “in practice”? I suppose he means by doing all the playacting things – wearing skirts, simpering, tilting the head, bellowing “IT’S MA’AM!!” But of course playacting isn’t how one can be a thing. It’s how one can pretend to be a thing, and it can maybe for some thoughtful people be a path to understanding how others feel. Pretending to … Read the rest

The DoJ objects.

Donald Trump’s lawyers are causing “irreparable harm” to the government and public by delaying the investigation into his hoarding of highly classified documents at his Florida mansion, the US Department of Justice said.

Trump and his lawyers of course couldn’t possibly care less. Causing harm is Trump’s raison d’être.

The claim came in a strongly worded court filing urging a district judge, Aileen Cannon, to reconsider her ruling last week granting Trump’s request for an independent “special master” in the case.

Any bets? No, nobody is going to throw their money away on that one.… Read the rest

This is bizarre.

Huge queues are forming along the banks of the River Thames, as people wait to pay their respects to the Queen.

…

The UK government has published a live queue tracker for people to follow on YouTube. Currently the queue is more than two miles long and the back of the queue is now past London Bridge.

TWO. MILES. LONG.

People queuing are being warned they will need to stand for many hours – possibly overnight – with little opportunity to sit down, as the queue will be constantly moving.

The maximum length of the queue is 10 miles – with 6.9 miles from Westminster to Southwark, and a three-mile zigzag queue in Southwark Park.

The futility of arguing with people who believe in nonsense: Michael Gibbon KC, Counsel for Mermaids, asking questions of Bev Jackson of LGBA:

MG: Only a few questions left. Turn to disagreement with Mr Nicholson. He gave evidence that LGBA denigrated people and organisations that support trans rights.

BJ: yes that was his evidence. 

MG: People were invited to make donations in Nicolson’s name, April 2021. See eg tweets here, by LGBA. Thank a JE for donation, she calls Nicolson a misogynist homophobe. Not a sensible thing to do. 

BJ: Agree not sensible, would say mischievous. We were exasperated by his abuse of us. I believe a couple of people donated in his name and we then mentioned this

The Scottish Daily Express reports on the John Nicolson testimony n backlash:

SNP MP John Nicolson has been branded a “liar” and a “misogynist” for his contribution to an official hearing challenging the status of same-sex attraction charity, LBG Alliance.

The gay rights advocates separated from the likes of Stonewall over a belief that lesbian, gay and bisexual people had different needs than transgender-identified people but now face accusations of transphobia and “hate”.

It’s not “hate” to say that people can’t magically become something they’re not. I still can’t get used to the fact that so many adults are insisting so furiously and often that men can become women.

[I]t was a statement during cross-examination, about same-sex-attracted women that