Julie Bindel gives us the back story:

It was late August 2019 when a message popped up in my Twitter inbox from J.K. Rowling. I had noticed that she had begun to follow me on Twitter a few months earlier, along with a number of feminists, and I was delighted to hear from her.

“I’ve just seen that you’re in contact with Magdelen Berns,” she wrote. Berns was a young lesbian who, after being silenced at her university, made YouTube videos tackling the absurdity of transgender ideology. She was popular, hilarious and informative. I say was; Berns, in her 30s, was dying of a brain tumour. I planned to visit her at a hospice in Edinburgh and had put

Jean Hatchet on the misogyny in some of the reactions to that lunch in Hammersmith:

These women are very well aware that simply gathering in this way is a political act which will cause trans activists to seek to punish them for their audacity, for daring to show openly their love for other women. Predictably the backlash from trans activists to these photos was swift and it was vicious. Deep misogyny dripped through the internet like poison.

In the photos posted JK Rowling, in a flowery tea dress with a low-cut neck, looks stunning — elegant and graceful. She wears her 56 years happily, with pride. The tweets focused on her body and her looks, however. One user @effingfaded wrote

Enough of all this seriousness.… Read the rest

Sweden has made The Big Swerve.

The Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare released new recommendations that effectively halt “gender-affirming” medical interventions in minors and prioritize psychotherapy for the treatment of gender-dysphoric youth. This is confirms the direction taken by the leading children’s hospital in Sweden last year, after a series of investigative reports exposed the harm suffered by children and young people who were medically “transitioned” using hormones and surgery.

The link is dated February 2022 (and is in Swedish). I suppose now the “activists” will be accusing Sweden of embracing “conversion therapy.” One person’s “refraining from extreme surgeries and/or drugs for dysphoric children” is another person’s “extreme cruelty via conversion therapy.”… Read the rest

NOVA did an episode last year on coral reef bleaching and attempts to speed up the evolution of heat-resistant corals.

Australia’s Great Barrier Reef has been hit by widespread coral bleaching repeatedly in recent years, where marine heat waves have turned large parts of the reef a ghostly white.

…

Back-to-back bleaching events are expected to become more common as the climate gets hotter, but it’s happening sooner than expected in Australia – a worrying sign that the vast majority of the world’s coral reefs are at risk of disappearing.

“Climate change is a whole host of bad things for corals,” says Emily Darling, director of coral reef conservation at the Wildlife Conservation Society. “If they’re getting bleached and

Monitoring the rebellious women 24/7.

Oh please do bore off. I have no clue who you are but you really really need to spend less time worrying about a group of women you will never meet talking and eating together…

— Rosie Duffield MP (@RosieDuffield1) April 13, 2022

What?! How dare she! How dare she talk back to a man that way!

Your bio says New Zealand – I do have a large constituency but not quite that large!

— Rosie Duffield MP (@RosieDuffield1) April 13, 2022

Well when he says “your constituents” immediately followed by “we” he of course doesn’t mean he is one of her constituents, he means [ explanation goes here ].… Read the rest

This sensible and discerning fella at the blog Learning From Dogs got permission from Free Inquiry to republish my think-piece in the current issue titled Cruising Over the Edge.

The fine editors at FI found the perfect photo to illustrate it. [Updating: but this illustration isn’t that one.]

It’s not fake. Just so you know.

“Veronica Ivy” enters the race. Burnaby Velodrome.

Here's some new footage of Veronica Ivy / Rachel McKinnon getting ready for a women's cycling race earlier this year pic.twitter.com/yQN7NIBTL1

— ripx4nutmeg (@ripx4nutmeg) April 13, 2022

Updating to add, h/t Dave Ricks:

Oh really.

The source is Private Eye News, she says in a followup tweet.

The Guardian kept it secret. So interesting.… Read the rest

No, that’s wrong.

No, feminists are not “whipping up fear about ‘manly’ looking folk in toilets.” We’re defending our right to have some spaces away from men, toilets being one such space. Not ‘manly’ looking folk, but men. It’s not about the appearance, it’s about the reality. Has Willoughby never heard the old saw that Appearances Can Be Deceiving? More seriously, is he genuinely unaware that such a distinction exists?

He keeps reminding us that some men are good at appearing like women. We know. It’s unfortunate that some men are able to use that talent to gain the trust of women in order to rape or kill them, or both. Willoughby however seems to be arguing that … Read the rest

Mmmmmm point missed.

That is strange, because having traveled "the world over" very extensively, I can tell you that VAST numbers of women live on annual incomes less than the cost of the phones on that table,
and never get to have fun in chic spaces quaffing expensive wines. https://t.co/SYlXXynSkp

— Craig Murray (@CraigMurrayOrg) April 11, 2022

Craig Murray is a historian and human rights activist and a former ambassador – yet he gets such a clear statement so thoroughly wrong. It’s not about the restaurant or the wines or the phones. It’s about the solidarity among women.

Weird of him to decide to sneer at Onjali Rauf, too.… Read the rest

James Beal sounds as if he’d have liked to be there.

Over bottles of wine at an Italian restaurant, they put their arms around each other and hugged like old friends.

But the Sunday lunch in west London was in fact the first time JK Rowling had met Maya Forstater, whose legal battle has had a profound effect on them both.

Friendships can form in advance of [and even without] meeting though. They can, and they make first meetings much easier than the cold open kind.

Rowling organised the lunch, at The River Café, Hammersmith, for campaigners, including the Labour MP Rosie Duffield and the philosopher Kathleen Stock, who have been targeted by the trans lobby.

As have … Read the rest

NPR has a “book review” that in a surprise twist turns out to be a polemic attacking feminist women.

In an apocalypse where a virus turns anyone with enough testosterone into a feral, cannibalistic beast, who survives?

In Gretchen Felker-Martin’s electric debut novel Manhunt, the book’s nightmare world is populated with everyone left –

That’s a confusing half-sentence. I guess it means the survivors are the ones who populate the nightmare world, unless it means everyone left wing. Anyway…

the book’s nightmare world is populated with everyone left — mostly cisgender women, but there are also plenty of non-binary people, transgender men, and transgender women.

Oh, that kind of nightmare world – where we no longer have women and men, … Read the rest

Details on Blunt’s booboo:

The Conservative MP Crispin Blunt has resigned as chair of the LGBTQ+ parliamentary group and withdrawn comments that a fellow MP found guilty of sexual assault was a victim of a “miscarriage of justice”.

After an outcry from MPs across the political spectrum, Blunt deleted the tweet defending convicted MP Imran Ahmad Khan and removed the comment from his website after an intervention from Tory whips overnight.

I’m picturing them taking turns to scold him all night long. No sleep for him!

His retraction tweet says, idiotically:

I am sorry that my defence of him has been a cause of significant upset and concern not least to victims of sexual offences.

Like saying “I’m sorry … Read the rest

Now there’s a headline:

Crispin Blunt’s defence of sex offender MP revives stench of impunity

The attempt by Crispin Blunt to taint a court’s verdict of sexual assault against the former Tory MP Imran Ahmad Khan will put the apparent culture of impunity at the Palace of Westminster in the spotlight again.

While the #MeToo scandal led to major reforms to try to protect staff members and parliamentary aides from bullying and abuse, there have been multiple attempts over the past few years to cast aspersions on those seeking justice.

Three Conservative MPs in recent years have been found by courts to have committed sexual assault or rape, two of them with character references provided by fellow Conservatives. Throughout the

Back atcha, “sister.”

Crispin Blunt’s statement on a colleague convicted of sexually assaulting a minor has angered a lot of MPs (including Joanna Cherry).

The Tory MP Crispin Blunt is facing calls to quit as chair of a Parliamentary Group on LGBT+ rights after he defended a colleague found guilty of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old boy.

Mr Blunt, who chairs the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Global LGBT+ Rights, made a public intervention on Monday after Conservative MP Imran Ahmad Khan was found guilty of sexual assault.

Khan, who has been expelled from the Conservative Party, continues to deny wrongdoing and does not intend to stand down as an MP but is likely to face removal from office after he is sentenced.

In

Remember Crispin Blunt MP? I wrote about him last August, in a post about the pressure being put on Lisa Townsend, Surrey’s Police and Crime Commissioner, who was being accused of “transphobia” for saying men shouldn’t be in women’s prisons. A Surrey news outlet reported:

Marc Jones, chair of the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners (APCC), came to her defence, saying: “Some services quite simply can’t function in a gender neutral way”, which Reigate MP Crispin Blunt said was an “evidence-free panicked response”.

We don’t. But too much more of this exaggerated and evidence free panicked response and we will do even more harm to trans and gender fluid people whose challenges the rest of us are

Oh really.

As of today, we have become aware that the charitable status of the organisation is being questioned. In line with our usual practice where a grantee is under investigation or review this grant is suspended.

(2/2)

— The London Community Foundation (@London_cf) April 11, 2022

Can’t have LGB without the T. Not allowed.… Read the rest

More from Willoughby.

A butch woman is not the same as a male in female spaces. Women can be masculine. Femininity does not equal female! Trans identified males retain a MALE pattern of criminality. Females are not generally violent, no matter how butch they look. https://t.co/vvF3rcHb7n pic.twitter.com/PudQlVCZOB

— Kae 🍀⚪️💜 (@KarenPheiffer) April 11, 2022

Whilst it is unpleasant for women to be stalked and derided for their appearance whilst at a female lunch ,it does serve a valuable purpose of shining some sunlight on the pure misogyny of India Willoughby .

— kate commonsense (@KateCommonsense) April 11, 2022

https://twitter.com/debateisokay/status/1513293079737999364

And there is a difference between the two. Imagine!… Read the rest