I’m seeing a lot of conversations about emotional support dogs and contingencies related to them and who gets to decide und so weiter so I decided to seek basic information via Google. Questions questions.

What does an emotional support pet do?

How do I train my emotional support dog for anxiety?

Can I make my cat an emotional support animal?

Can emotional support dogs fly?

Imagine how supportive it would be if your dog could fly!

But what do you do if your emotional support dog has anxiety?… Read the rest

It seems that unprovoked attacks, like hangings, concentrate the mind. Finland and Sweden are feeling less neutral.

Finland and Sweden could apply for Nato membership within days – a monumental shift for two nations with a long history of wartime neutrality and staying out of military alliances.

Russia strongly opposes the two states joining and uses the expansion of the West’s defensive military alliance as a pretext for its war in Ukraine.

Well, Putin opposes. What Russia thinks independent of Putin is not always easy to know, because Putin doesn’t allow it to be easy.

Putin is all of the totalitarian force and punishment of Stalin, with no trace of any fig leaf of working class solidarity or any … Read the rest

The Telegraph did a story on the mother, the support person, and the dog. It will be a Royal Court play next, then a 6 part series on Channel 4.

Stonewall’s witness interrupted Allison Bailey’s tribunal hearing on Tuesday so that their dog and mother could accompany them while giving evidence.

Actually it was dog and mother and support person who turned out to be a support solicitor i.e. an extra lawyer who was a surprise to the court. I think the court wasn’t best pleased.

[A]s Kirrin Medcalf, head of trans inclusion at Stonewall, was sworn in to give evidence via the online hearing before Employment Judge Sarah Goodman on Tuesday, the hearing was forced to break after he

The Guardian has a piece by the author of “The Family Sex Show” saying it was right-wingers who objected to onstage porn for 5-year-olds.

The show is called The Family Sex Show. Its aim is to reimagine the way we think and talk about relationships and sex.

And it’s for children. What could possibly go wrong?

It doesn’t seem to have crossed Josie Dale-Jones’s mind that responsible parents don’t necessarily want Josie Dale-Jones “reimagining” the way we think and talk about relationships and sex onstage for an audience of their children. Who is Josie Dale-Jones? What’s her expertise? What does she know about child abuse, pedophilia, child groping, child grooming, child rape? Why is it up to her to reimagine … Read the rest

The ACLU has an article promoted on Facebook about Alito’s draft, so I clicked on the link to see if they managed to mention women at all. The answer: as little as possible.

What to Know About the Leaked Supreme Court Abortion Draft Opinion, and What’s Next

On Monday night, Politico published a leaked draft of the highly anticipated Supreme Court opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. The draft majority opinion, penned by Justice Samuel Alito, overturns the landmark Roe v. Wade decision, which has been on the books for nearly 50 years and has ensured abortion is a protected federal constitutional right. If this draft decision is issued as the official decision, it would be unprecedented

Ain’t this the truth.

The Guardian reports:

A paedophile has been jailed for 10 years after using social media to groom children.

Rachel Fenton, who police said was known as Richard Fenton when arrested and charged, pleaded guilty to 21 child sexual abuse offences and a drug offence and was sent to a male prison.

The Guardian understands Fenton was living as a man when arrested in November 2020 and was later charged under that name.

But during the sentencing hearing on Monday, Manchester Minshull Street crown court heard Fenton had changed their name and was in the process of transitioning to become a woman.

Gee I wonder why. Couldn’t possibly be to escape violence from male prisoners could it?

A spokesperson for

For ALL women, meaning including men.

It's been produced by Kirrin Medcalf, Stonewall's trans officer. pic.twitter.com/Gxixqy6Jk2

— The Lies They Tell (@sarahstuartxx) December 13, 2020

… Read the rest

Ok it appears it’s going to be wall-to-wall tribunal here for a bit, because what’s coming out is too astounding to miss.

At this point they’re talking about whether Kirrin Medcalf [KM] consulted with other people before emailing Garden Court. KM is head of trans inclusion at Stonewall, and was a new hire at the time.

It was within discussions about safety and about how people might be in a space with someone who wanted to physically harm them.
BC: in email with lots of redactions. You say these redactions are your stuff?
KM: not 100% sure. Some of it
BC: look at claimants statement. She sets

— Tribunal Tweets (@tribunaltweets) May 10, 2022

“people might be in a space … Read the rest

At the tribunal: is “terf” derogatory or no?

BC: [new doc] tweets from 2015 'Kill all Terfs' 'Girl Dick TERFS can choke on my' 'Enjoy my lady dick in your mouth cunt wipe' 'shoot a terf today' 'all terfs deserve to be shot in the head' 'kill all terfs' someone holding two knives 'POV you're a terf in my mentions' 'suck on

— Tribunal Tweets (@tribunaltweets) May 10, 2022

BC: i don't suggest that this is how a majority of how transpeople behave but i am suggesting that you knew the term terf is used as a derogatory term and was used with violent rhetoric
KM: I disagree – there are instances but it's not the norm. It's usually used

Originally a comment by Tigger the Wing on Age appropriate.

Four? Nope. Eleven? Well…

Yesterdat evening, eleven-year-old grandson and I were discussing our tastes in computer games etc. and he suddenly blurted out “We’re transgender!” Now, I got the impression it was a new word he’d overheard and had worked out the likely meaning in his head; and that he couldn’t wait to impress Granny with a word which she might not know (that age group does like to get one over on the adults). After some gentle probing, I discovered that he did, indeed, think that ‘transgender’ means ‘gender non-conforming’.

Over the course of a somewhat eclectic and rambling conversation (because eleven and ADHD) I explained that everyone … Read the rest

BradfemlyWalsh shared the best tweet from the Allison Bailey tribunal to date:

could be there.
EJ: yes and we would be able to see the support person in those circumstances.
IO: We need to fit them all in
EJ: all of them?
IO: yes KM, his mother, his support person and his support dog
BC: this is all new information

— Tribunal Tweets (@tribunaltweets) May 10, 2022

“Yes KM, his support person, his mother and his support dog.”

It’s a gift, I tells ya.

KM by the way is the “Head of Trans inclusion at Stonewall” who wrote to Garden Court Chambers to complain about Allison.

BREAKING & EXCLUSIVE: I’ve published Stonewall’s complaint about me in full, along with my

Conor Friedersdorf set off an interesting [cough] exchange of views by asking if preschool children can understand what gender-obsessed adults mean by “non-binary.”

Okay so now a question for progressives. Does this seem age-appropriate to you for a Pre-K class or do you think (as I do) that there's no way kids that age will understand what "non-binary" means? Does anyone disagree and think that's a good thing to introduce in pre-K? pic.twitter.com/48buPJOPhg

— Conor Friedersdorf (@conor64) May 9, 2022

I don’t think young children will understand a word of that. I think complicated explanations with many moving parts and unfamiliar concepts just go over their heads. What kind of “love” are we talking about here? Do we know that … Read the rest

Pelosi wrote a letter to the Dems today:

Dear Democratic Colleague,

Last Monday, the Nation saw a draft of a Supreme Court decision that sadly would overturn Roe v. Wade, an action which is the culmination of Republicans’ decades-long crusade against women’s fundamental freedoms.

With this draft ruling striking down the nearly fifty-year-old precedent of Roe v. Wade and undermining the Constitutional right to privacy, Republicans would rip away women’s right to make the most intimate and personal decisions.  If handed down, this decision by GOP-appointed Justices would mean that, for the first time in our history, America’s daughters will have less freedom than their mothers.

Republicans have made clear that their goal will be to seek to

Aaron Rupar watched the governors gloat so that we don’t have to.

If the Supreme Court follows through on a leaked draft decision that would end the federal right to an abortion, abortion procedures would immediately become illegal in the 22 red or purple states that already have bans on the books. Comments from Republican governors on the most recent round of Sunday news shows served as grim reminders of what that would mean for women — and hinted at rights Republicans will come for next.

Spoiler: they’re not stopping with abortion.

Hutchinson [Arkansas] and Reeves [Mississippi] know they’re essentially making women second-class citizens. During their Sunday interviews, both governors tried to soften the blow by vowing to provide more

We haven’t finished yet, they gloat. There’s more, they smirk. Your life belongs to us, they sneer.

The Republican governor of Mississippi has refused to rule out attempting to ban some forms of contraception if the supreme court ruling that guarantees the right to abortion should fall.

…

Speaking on CNN on Sunday, Reeves confirmed that his state’s trigger law would go into effect if Roe is overturned.

Reeves’ host on CNN, Jake Tapper, then referred to neighbouring Louisiana, where Republicans have advanced a bill to make abortion a crime of murder.

Tapper said: “They’re talking about not only criminally charging girls and women who get abortions as committing homicide, but they’re also talking about defining the moment of

How dare women talk about women things.

Another walkout:

A body representing football writers in Scotland has apologised after a speaker’s sexist and misogynistic jokes prompted attendees to walk out of its annual awards dinner.

…

Gabriella Bennett, the co-chair of Women In Journalism Scotland, told BBC Radio Scotland: “I really enjoy it as an event, but there are always off-colour jokes made by the speakers … sexist or misogynistic. But last night’s speech was really next-level. I walked out after about five minutes of maybe a 20-minute speech.

“My table stood up to leave, and I saw Eilidh Barbour and people on her table start to leave. But there were loads of people laughing at these jokes. We were two tables in an enormous room

Trump again artlessly tells the world what an incompetent fool he is by talking trash about people he himself gave the jobs he says they did so badly.

Trump, in a written statement to CBS’s 60 Minutes, said he had “no comment” when asked whether he ever asked ex-defense secretary Mark Esper about sending “missiles into Mexico” to destroy drug cartel labs in the country, which Esper claimed in a memoir published this week.

So that’s a yes.

“Mark Esper was weak and totally ineffective, and because of it, I had to run the military,” Trump’s statement to 60 Minutes boasted. “He was a lightweight and figurehead, and I realized it very early on.”

Well not “early on” enough, clearly, … Read the rest

Australia’s Labor Party is disappearing women from its policies.

Labor has “betrayed” women by axing the words “mother”, “breastfeeding” and “pregnant women” from its official policy platform, say women’s rights advocates.

The official ALP National Platform, a blueprint for its direction in government, has even got rid of an entire section devoted to “maternal and child health”.

Because…what? None of that is needed any more?

The current 2021 policy document which “sets out the contemporary policy agenda that an Albanese Labor Government will implement” does not mention the word mother once.

In the older 2018 version it spoke about mothers four times, and also had references to pregnant mothers and breastfeeding.

Now the new policy references “people” and “individuals”