What do words mean – it’s such a puzzle. We have to start anew every morning, figuring out their meanings for ourselves.

Women For Independence is a modern, inclusive, intersectional feminist organisation. All of our members have signed up agreeing to the terms in our constitution, one of which clearly states that we are open to all self identifying women.
1/3 pic.twitter.com/CbzJ7zbuUR

— WomenForIndependence 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 (@WomenForIndy) February 11, 2022

The first tweet in the series says they include men in their for women feminism. It’s so important to make clear and underline that their feminism is for men that they say that before they say anything else. The way they say it has a bullying note, too – it’s clearly … Read the rest

So anyway, at least it’s an excellent way to wring money out of people.

Last month Trump got dressed up and went to a party in Naples, Florida.

There, a long red carpet marked the pathway into a Christmas-decorated hangar filled with supporters of Mr. Trump who had paid $10,000 to $30,000 for the privilege of attending a party and taking a photo with him.

…

But the money raised did not go to Mr. Trump’s political operation. Instead, Mr. Trump’s share of the evening’s proceeds went straight into his pocket, according to a person familiar with the arrangement.

Well, yeah. If you know there are people willing to pay 30 grand to take a photo with you, what … Read the rest

Trevor Phillips on Stonewall’s attacks on the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, starting with wondering what has happened to what used to be the gay rights movement.

Today, that gay rights movement seems a shadow of itself, preoccupied by the intricacies of a language despotism that has emerged from the faculty lounges of minor North American universities. The latest step, a call for the UN to revoke the status of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, of which I was the founding chair, is baffling. Who could have imagined that LGBTQ+ campaigners would so contort themselves that they are petitioning a body which is advised on human rights by countries that stone women and imprison gay men?

As we … Read the rest

Funny, or no?

Critics may have raved about This Is Going to Hurt, the television adaptation based on Adam Kay’s memoir about life as a junior doctor at the sharp end of maternity healthcare.

The response has been less rapturous among mothers, however. Many viewers praised the series, starring Ben Whishaw, for its dark humour and unflinching portrayal of NHS maternity services. But midwives and women said that the male doctor’s wisecracks as his patients faced life-or-death situations were “misogynistic” and “unfunny”.

The director, a woman, said she wanted to keep it real, but many women chose different terms.

They claimed that the “condescending” attitude of the lead protagonist reminded them of the traumatic experiences of childbirth. Anita Singh,

Foxy Maugham seems to consider Ben Hunte a reliable source, and a Conservative peer warns him that the record shows he’s not.

If you believe Hunte without seeing the evidence you have seriously lost your marbles. He has form.

— Ralph Lucas (@LordLucasCD) February 11, 2022

The BBC had to remove large parts of Hunte’s article on the Keira Bell puberty blocker ruling after complaints of inaccuracies. Hunte left the BBC to work for Vice.

Foxy threw his weight around.

I'm far from sure it's wise for you to speak that way about a journalist unless you have evidence he is dishonest. I'd delete the tweet if I were you.

— Jo Maugham (@JolyonMaugham) February 11, 2022

The legal burden

Charles Windsor identifies as a guy with medical expertise, and he doesn’t hesitate to use his notoriety and money to thrust his fake expertise on the world. Edzard Ernst writes:

Yet, his relentless efforts are not appreciated by everyone (another British understatement!). There are those who view his interventions as counter-productive distractions from the important and never-ending task to improve modern healthcare. There are those who warn that integrating SCAM [so-called alternative medicine] into our medical routine will render healthcare less efficient. There are those who claim that the Prince’s preoccupation with matters that he is not qualified to fully comprehend is a disservice to public health. And there are those who insist that the role of the heir

There’s a Guardian series: Living in a woman’s body. Of course you know what comes next: they get a man to talk about living in a woman’s body.

For the most part, our bodies are arbitrary. We get the body we get at birth: our eye colour, our hair colour, our skin colour. We have no say in those things at the moment we are born but, talking to my friend, I realised that subsequent changes are within our grasp.

Some are, some aren’t. You can’t make yourself taller or shorter. (There are ways of adjusting height a little bit but they’re horribly drastic. Not recommended.) You can’t make yourself older or younger. You can’t add arms or … Read the rest

Tony Blair still knows who women are.

When he was leader, there were no arguments about sex and gender, trans rights and toppling statues. Starmer will have to go into battle over the culture wars, he says. “The polls might say voters don’t care but if you dig a little deeper, what they are really saying is we don’t like all this stuff that is being shoved at us.”

I assume he is going to cite the third way again, but Blair comes down firmly on the side of the author JK Rowling. “They [voters] don’t want a situation where women can’t talk about being women. I have this conversation quite often with Labour people and I know their

No, trans women don’t experience misogyny, because they’re not women. They may experience fear and/or hatred of trans people, but they don’t experience hatred of women, because of not being women.

Men like Montgomerie want to steal everything that’s ours. On principle.… Read the rest

The ACLU is really leaning into this Erase Women campaign. It has a page for Abortion is Essential: Stories of Liberation, which continues the Delete Women program.

The ability to decide whether and when to have children is essential to allowing people to control their own lives and futures. For many, having access to affordable abortion care opens the door to fulfilling educational and career goals, better parenting, staying true to gender identities, and other critical parts of life that everyone should have the ability to choose for themselves.

Freedom to decide whether and when to have children is important to men too of course, but not in the up close inside your body way it is to women. … Read the rest

The ACLU has a fundraising ad on Facebook that links to a quiz about abortion rights. You know what happens next.

4. In what ways are states trying to force people to remain pregnant?

What they conceal and deny by doing this is the power aspect, the dominance-submission aspect, the inequality aspect, the systemic arrangements by which men get to tell women what to do but women don’t get to tell men what to do, the centrality of reproduction and pregnancy in the domination of women by men. What they conceal and deny by lying about who gets pregnant is the political aspect of abortion restrictions. The ACLU makes it all look random by telling the lie that people … Read the rest

I never got around to this yesterday and that just won’t do.

Just to clear things up, @RepMTG

Gazpacho: a vegetable-based Spanish cold soup
Gestapo: Nazi Germany's secret police pic.twitter.com/T9q76r706G

— Republican Voters Against Trump (@AccountableGOP) February 9, 2022

… Read the rest

What we need is more gun battles:

A Republican Senate primary candidate in Arizona has been condemned for a “disgusting” campaign ad in which he shoots at lookalike actors portraying Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi and incumbent Arizona senator Mark Kelly.

Jim Lamon, an energy executive, shared the ad on Twitter, saying it would be aired at this year’s Super Bowl.

Lamon would face Kelly in a general election in the autumn should he secure the Republican nomination.

Kelly is the husband of former Democratic congressman Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona, who was shot in the head in 2011 while greeting constituents outside of a local grocery store.

It’s Lamon’s pinned tweet.

Arizona has had enough of the DC

Stonewall and The Good Law Project are really determined to make sure women have no rights that would trump the invented “rights” of men to invade all our spaces, take all our prizes and jobs, destroy our sports, and bully us into silence.

Britain’s human rights watchdog faces a legal challenge to its status over a row about transgender rights.

A row over “rights” that aren’t “rights” at all.

In documents shared exclusively with the BBC, campaigners say they want the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s status as an independent group revoked. It comes after the EHRC was criticised for asking Scotland to pause its plans to make it easier for people to change their sex on their birth certificate.

Yup yup yup that’s all fine, this mediocre male swimmer can pretend to be a woman and compete against women so that he won’t be mediocre any more, no problem whatsoever. Nobody will be harmed except women so full speed ahead guys.

Penn swimmer Lia Thomas will be allowed to compete at the 2022 women’s swimming and diving championships as long as she meets the NCAA’s current testosterone thresholds.

This despite the fact that everyone knows testosterone is not like a lamp or a food processor – it doesn’t just stop when you switch it off. Most of the benefits of male puberty are permanent, and women don’t have them. The NCAA knows this, so it’s just saying “Fuck women, … Read the rest

Ah what a brilliant invention, how odd that no one’s ever thought of it before. A private army which will “apprehend” all the politicians and media people who “have been found to have committed crimes.” This will go very well, there will be no problems at all.

Yet more “blah blah because trans rights” without spelling out what “trans rights” are:

Female hospital patients’ dignity, privacy and safety is being “diminished significantly” by the imposition of transgender rights in the health service, it has been warned at Westminster.

Speaking in Parliament Tory peer Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne argued the provision of single-sex wards, exempted from equality legislation, was being undermined by updated NHS guidance.

That’s even more of a misleading disaster than usual, because Baroness Nicholson is reported saying one thing but the lede cites a quite different thing. The reporter, Nick Lester, seems to have translated exemption from equality legislation to “trans rights,” but is that accurate or fair? Is such exemption a right?

Reporters should … Read the rest

No kicking or slapping involved.… Read the rest

It’s Lia Thomas / Laurel Hubbard / Rachel McKinnon all over again.

Eddie Izzard will lead the cast of Joe Stephenson’s UK feature Doctor Jekyll, a modern interpretation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s novella The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde which places a woman in the lead role.

That is, Joe Stephenson is rethinking Doctor Jekyll as a woman, but then casting a man in the part, so not rethinking it as a woman at all.

Talk about having it both ways. “I’m making Jekyll a woman! And I’m casting a man as that woman! Am I original and quirky or what?!”

A new and more convoluted way to take away one of the few opportunities … Read the rest

Actual Vice headline:

Leaked EHRC Guidance Reveals Plans To Exclude Most Trans People From Bathrooms

First of all they don’t mean “bathrooms,” because in the UK that means literal bath rooms; they mean public toilets. But second and more to the point, of course they don’t. There are no plans to exclude people from public toilets.

Subhead:

Under unpublished guidance leaked to VICE World News, Britain’s equalities watchdog wanted to restrict the lives of trans people unless they held a Gender Recognition Certificate – despite only 1% of trans people in the UK having one.

No it didn’t. People don’t live in public toilets. It’s not in any meaningful sense “restricting the lives” of men to tell them they … Read the rest