From Jo Bartosch’s piece in Spiked! on the Tickle v Giggle ruling:

The judge went on to explain that although the science of sex difference was not in dispute, ‘the issues in this case involve wider issues than biology’. He considered and then dismissed expert opinion from evolutionary biologist Colin Wright, author and philosopher Kathleen Stock, and campaigner Helen Joyce. Remarkably, he declared Joyce, author of a best-selling book on transgenderism, as having ‘no recognised expertise in any of the areas in which she expresses an opinion’.

Well, if all the maniacs decide as one that they’re not going to listen to a single thing a woman says because they take it for granted that women are all worthless … Read the rest

Joan Smith on the ruling:

Women no longer exist as a separate category in Australia. Sex is “changeable”, according to the judge who has just ruled in a case that effectively destroys single-sex spaces and services for Australian women. It’s a devastating blow for female rights in the country, which is experiencing an “epidemic” of violence against women according to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.

If sex is changeable, tell us who the men are who have changed into women and gone on to get pregnant and give birth. Name one.

The implications of the judgment, while not directly about sexual and domestic violence, are far-reaching. There has never been a more urgent case for single-sex services in Australia, yet

… Read the rest

Pig of a man who demolished women’s right to women’s spaces complains about how bad this has been for him him him him him him him.

https://twitter.com/celinevmachine_/status/1826876226243264617

“Has stolen the last three years of my life” You know what would’ve helped with that? Not launching the case in the first place.

“There is so much hate cast on trans people” Acknowledging biological reality is not hateful.

“When I walked into the courtroom, I felt safe because I was treated with respect” Bro, the TRA’s out the front didn’t even recognize you. I know that because I was there. You were also “misgendered” multiple times by your own team. Pfft. THIS is the face that is setting women’s rights back in

… Read the rest

https://twitter.com/SoniaRGallego/status/1826764517172564295

Absolutely wild to watch a judge claim that sex can be changed because official documents can be updated with information contrary to the material reality of the person.#TickleVGiggle #IStandWithSallGrover #Onward

— Billy Bragg (@Serena_Partrick) August 22, 2024

It’s the “It’s in her passport” claim all over again. “What do you mean, it says she’s a woman right here in this little booklet thing!”

Women are second class citizens in Australia.
Absolutely out of their minds.

The fight is now to define sex in law?#TickleVGiggle

— RachelKnewBest XX (@RachelBowljiffy) August 22, 2024

It was nice having some rights. Quaint, but nice.… Read the rest

Fuming. Also raging.

https://twitter.com/STILLTish/status/1826761267891372090 https://twitter.com/MPMacLachlan/status/1826760891762966886

Australian women have no right to make a procedural boundary with a man if that man has a gender identity of female. Justice Bromwich relied heavily on the Qld BDM legislation that Shannon Femtiman admitted to making to affirm trans identified males. #TickleVGiggle

— Edie Wyatt (@msediewyatt) August 22, 2024

Apologies for swearing but I fucking hate this world. Women have zero rights anymore. A hairy arsed bloke now has to be accommodated whenever women want to meet, chat or do whatever they fucking well want to do. I hope no male only spaces are allowed in Aus any longer. https://t.co/ZTs1eeUBcw

— TheVikingDane (@TheVikingDane) August 22, 2024

… Read the rest

Fuck fuck fuck.

Women can’t get together without men in Australia.

https://twitter.com/salltweets/status/1826762817372127508

Women’s rights to assemble and to provide female only services away from males no longer exists in Australia. Here is the verdict in full. #TickleVGiggle #MensRightsActivists pic.twitter.com/uPpKA0l4pa

— Admiral Invalidator (@Artofhunger75) August 22, 2024

The Federal Court of Australia just sent a massive "f*ck you" to women across the globe.

"Roxanne" Tickle's indirect discrimination claim has succeeded. Giggle has been told to pay him $10k.#IStandWithSallGrover pic.twitter.com/UnmgzfkgAJ

— Brandubh (@brandubh4) August 22, 2024

… Read the rest

Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, life is not quite so light-hearted.

As of today, this is how women must dress in Afghanistan, according to the Taliban's Supreme Leader.

The following rules are now in effect: The full face must be covered—no hands, nothing visible. The black veil was presented as a "recommendation" a year ago, now it is the law. pic.twitter.com/GmqupXlJms

— Sara Wahedi (@SaraWahedi) August 22, 2024

But at least they’re provided with water bottles.… Read the rest

Yes but what is “his work”?

https://twitter.com/ladbible/status/1826291909947511019

I’m not gonna try and write a children’s book tomorrow. I rather wish she’d stick out of what I do, and not comment on stuff that she doesn’t know much about either.

Like mutilating people’s genitals?

This guy started out as a urologist and switched to “gender surgery” when it became the next big thing. He’s not a scholar of gender, he’s a surgeon. He knows how to perform surgery but that doesn’t mean he knows anything about whether it’s a brilliant idea to alter people’s genitalia to make them look more like the other sex. Since he has a financial incentive not to look deeply into that question, it’s rather the opposite.… Read the rest

Ah yes, the “Oops I just realized I’m a woman” defense.

A member of the police force in Basque Country, Spain, has been arrested for attempting to murder his wife in front of the couple’s two daughters. Following the horrific crime, the family learned that Jose* had changed his legal sex in an apparent effort to avoid harsher penalties for domestic violence.

The Basque Government Security Department has confirmed that the attack took place in San Sebastián in the early hours of Saturday morning. Jose threatened to harm his daughters, one of whom is an infant, before grabbing a kitchen knife “of considerable dimensions” and attempting to harm his wife with it. Fortunately, the woman was able to locate

… Read the rest

If only people could grasp that they’re not the same thing.

Student psychotherapist wins apology over expulsion for gender-critical views

James Esses has reached a settlement with the Metanoia Institute in London, which specialises in training counsellors and psychotherapists. He lost his place on the course after campaigning against the government’s proposed ban on conversion practices.

Esses launched an online petition in April 2021 highlighting concerns that the proposed ban on conversion practices – the practice of attempting to change an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity – might end up criminalising explorative therapy for children with gender dysphoria. He was expelled from the course by email shortly after.

That’s where the Guardian goes wrong, right there – sexual orientation … Read the rest

If her voice can be heard, next thing you know she’s pregnant with some stranger’s kid.

The Taliban’s new decree bans women’s voices from being heard by men outside their family. This regime has progressively banned women from work, education, travel, media, and public life, reducing their existence to mere reproductive functions with no voice or face. pic.twitter.com/NwULdOZfAQ

— Habib Khan (@HabibKhanT) August 21, 2024

… Read the rest

Trump explains to his advisors that he can’t take their advice because he’s too stupid.

DONALD TRUMP HAS NO PLANS TO HEED the advice of his aides and limit himself to policy contrasts when he debates Kamala Harris. He wants to make it personal.

“This is just the way I am. I hate my opponent. I hate my opponents,” Trump told a confidant who advised the former president to consider backing away from calling the vice president “stupid” or “dumb” at their high-profile standoff in a few weeks, which he has done repeatedly.

Trump explained to the confidant that he’s treating Harris the same way he did Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton. “Hillary, Joe, Kamala. It doesn’t matter. I just

… Read the rest

How dare a woman expect a hostel for women to exclude men?

An Australian traveller in France who complained there was a trans woman in a female-only bathroom at their hostel was shocked to be told that she had broken the law by raising her concerns.

Melbourne woman Cassandra was visiting the French city of Lyon to watch the Olympics women’s soccer on July 26 and 27. 

She booked a women’s dorm and got there late at night when everyone was asleep.

On the first morning she was shocked to see a trans woman, who she initially thought was a man, in the bathroom. She asked to speak to the hostel manager.

Derp. A trans woman is a man. That’s … Read the rest

Joyous Apostasy Day all. Celebrate! Blaspheme. Argue. Reason. Enjoy the wind in your hair.

Today is #ApostasyDay, established by #ExMuslims International with @CEMB_forum in 2020.

6,500 have already signed call to end #apostasy laws, commemorate victims & affirm freedom of thought & conscience.

Join us. https://t.co/ert6UQ4k5f pic.twitter.com/yQ0Ki0gizr

— Maryam Namazie مریم نمازی (@MaryamNamazie) August 22, 2024

… Read the rest

Fury at the BBC again:

Sickening, disrespectful & deeply offensive that the BBC would call Samantha Holden anything other than a ‘woman’. Also, the sanitised language of “sex worker” dignifies only the pimps and punters, never the women themselves, whether they’re involved in prostitution or assumed to…

— Julie Bindel (@bindelj) August 21, 2024

The BBC using the term “sex worker” to describe Samantha Holden is a partial editorial decision to sanitise the abuse and exploitation of women… which in this case ended tragically in murder. For shame. https://t.co/yZrYkCOifn

— Sonia Sodha (@soniasodha) August 21, 2024

I’d hoped we’d moved on from dark days ‘murdered sex worker’ labelling. Not so @BBCNews. Appalling headline in same vein as 1970s ‘Yorkshire

… Read the rest

That is funny.

Donald Trump has apparently been stewing on a speech given at the Democratic National Convention by New York Gov. Kathy Hochul.

The former president on Wednesday singled her out in a Truth Social post as “the nastiest speaker on Monday evening… as it pertains to your favorite President, me.” He added: “Her total hatred, and statements made about me, had no bounds.”

Trump calling other people “nasty.” Trump complaining about hatred and statements. But the funniest –

…on the very distinct possibility I will win the Presidency, wouldn’t it be better for the people of New York State to have a Governor who got along with the President? Adversarial relationships are not good in politics!”

Really?! … Read the rest

Newsweek sees fit to publish a bizarrely sloppy piece on That Bad Woman by one Ryan Smith, its Senior Pop Culture & Entertainment Reporter.

Author J.K. Rowling has fallen silent on her usually busy X (formerly Twitter) feed, after Olympic gold medalist boxer Imane Khelif filed a legal complaint in France for alleged cyber harassment over statements regarding her gender.

“After” a lot of things. After the sun came up, after we all became a day older, after time passed…and after Rowling went on vacation. That little word “after” can be a sly way of implying causality without actually ascribing causality. That of course is what Newsweek is letting its pop culture boffin do here.

On August 9, lawyers for

… Read the rest

Yikes.

I used to admire Mona Eltahawy.

When those racist transphobes are spurred into action by the tears of a white woman who should’ve stayed out of the boxing ring because she couldn’t take the punches, you know that we win by refusing their gender binary goalpostshttps://t.co/wAASezTfNv

— Mona Eltahawy (@monaeltahawy) August 20, 2024

“the tears of a white woman” “should have stayed out of the boxing ring because she couldn’t take the punches” – the punches of a man, that is, which women in women’s boxing aren’t supposed to have to take.

What an absolutely shit thing to say.… Read the rest

The who have done what?

Over recent years the UK’s Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA) has updated their curriculum guidance in all subject areas to include themes of social justice. They have done this by requiring that all courses include elements of Equality Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) and Education for Sustainable Development (ESD).

I didn’t know there was such a thing as the UK’s Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education, but now that I know, I’m baffled to learn that it “requires” political content in all subject areas. What, even physics, geology, astronomy, engineering, mathematics? What the flaming hell for?

One might well question how to incorporate the values of EDI into a course on abstract algebra or

… Read the rest

Trump wants more people to die in order to boost his chances in the election.

Donald Trump has been speaking with the powers that be about Israel’s war on Gaza—but it’s not in an effort to end the genocide.

Instead, Trump has allegedly been talking with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to avert a cease-fire deal, fearing that doing so could help Vice President Kamala Harris win in November, according to PBS.

That’s right, he’s trying to block a cease-fire for the sake of his job prospects.

… Read the rest