She’s on the plane and the plane is in the air.

Nazanin’s plane took off from Oman just over half an hour ago and she’s due to arrive in the UK this evening.

Here she is on the plane – the final step in what has been a six year long ordeal.#NazaninIsFree pic.twitter.com/YN2AHA6jVR

— Tulip Siddiq (@TulipSiddiq) March 16, 2022

… Read the rest

War crimes continue.

In the last few hours, [Mariupol] city officials have told the BBC that a theatre in the city where more than 1,000 people had been sheltering – taking refuge against the incessant Russian shelling – came under bombardment.

And the continuing bombardment was making it impossible for rescue workers to reach the theatre.

We’ve just heard from the Russian defence ministry, they have denied that they struck this theatre. So again we’re left with who caused what, who is to blame. And in a city which is suffering.

If they did bombard the theatre that’s a war crime. Biden has just told reporters that Putin is a war criminal.

Civilian buildings where people are sheltering from … Read the rest

Hey kids, it’s deplatforming Wednesday!

1/3 I was due to talk about feminism and lesbian identity at @UniOfYork today but have been deplatformed as a result of the LGBTQ+ lot. They claim to have simply delayed it for security reasons, but that's bullshit. One bluefringe stated in an open letter to the student union,

— Julie Bindel (@bindelj) March 16, 2022

here?” and “are those students directly endangered by her rhetoric to understand they are not safe on campus?”. Watch this space. I will not be taking this without protest.

— Julie Bindel (@bindelj) March 16, 2022

To correct – the comment about me existing only to murder women in prostitution, that was a comment made on one of the

On their way, the BBC reports.

British-Iranian nationals Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori are on a plane leaving Iran after being freed, the government has said.

Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe will be reunited with her husband and seven-year-old daughter, who plans to show her mother new toys when she returns to the UK.

“It’s going to be the beginning of a new life,” Richard Ratcliffe said.

Mr Ashoori’s family said they could now rebuild the foundations of their family with their “cornerstone back in place”.

…

Cuddling his daughter, Gabriella, Mr Ratcliffe told journalists they would really believe the news when they saw “mummy”.

So not quite yet, but close.

Updating to add:

I’ve just heard from Richard Ratcliffe that Nazanin

Breaking news –

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the British-Iranian woman detained in Iran nearly six years ago, has been released and is on her way back to the UK.

The 43-year-old was arrested in 2016 and accused of plotting to overthrow the Iranian government, which she denied.

Her MP, Tulip Siddiq, tweeted that Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe was at the airport in Tehran.

She had been under house arrest and was given her UK passport back this week.

Her husband Richard Ratcliffe, who lives with their daughter Gabriella in Hampstead, London, had campaigned for her release, including by going on hunger strike in October last year.

Mazel tov.… Read the rest

Originally a comment by Der Durchwanderer on How to personalise care.

There is a meme (in the classical sense of the word) circulating among some young people, especially young men, that “hard times create hard men, hard men create soft times, soft times create soft men, soft men create hard times”. And this sentiment, while chauvinist and not true in the strictest sense — exigencies of political economy, the natural environment, and ever-present arseholes gaming social systems at those systems’ expense to the arseholes’ personal advantage are almost always at fault for “hard times” — it does reflect a true-ish instinct one gets from the cyclical nature of stability and collapse.

Only a decadent society can collapse, because only … Read the rest

Last May, an interview with a woman who founded a company:

Daniella Peri is the Founder of Yoppie, a DTC subscription-based, organic period care and PMS solutions provider. As part of our FemTech Founder series, FemTech.Live interviewed Daniella about her mission to improve menstrual health care.

So Daniella, tell us a bit about yourself and Yoppie.

I’m the Founder and CEO of Yoppie – a FemTech company that enables women to take control of their menstrual health. It’s my one and only experience in the FemTech world.

Yoppie is a DTC subscription-based, organic period care and PMS solutions provider that uses smart tech to enable women to not only personalise and manage their menstrual care but also to

Taunty McTauntface.

A few days ago Jolyon Maugham gave the world his views on the Cass report on gender identity services, in great detail and at much length, because he is…an expert on the subject? No, but he plays one on Twitter. The final point he makes is that doing nothing is not doing nothing.

Let me explain why I make that – vigorous – criticism. She recognises, several times, that doing nothing is not a neutral act, eg: pic.twitter.com/KO16TFLXRI

— Jo Maugham (@JolyonMaugham) March 10, 2022

If you are a young trans woman, absent puberty blockers, your voice will drop and you will develop an adam's apple and this will make it very, very difficult for you to 'pass' as what

The tribunal is looking into the issue of the hostile work environment too.

BC: Looking at DM from Mr Clemence. Says beyond this she was disseminating to whole office re gender of actual staff members. Not true?
AG: Don't know where MC got that from
BC: not true
AG: I do know she was saying about not realitiy and was considered innappropraite by some ppl

— Tribunal Tweets (@tribunaltweets) March 15, 2022

BC: There had obviuosly been lots of discussion and comment about the claimant that led to her being misrepresented as bigot attacking collegues

AG: I didn't see any of that. MC not a water cooler person. But yes there are inaccuracies here

— Tribunal Tweets (@tribunaltweets) March 15,

Originally a comment by latsot on You conflate identity and reality.

One of the issues here is that ‘identity’ is such a heavily overloaded word. I mean ‘overloaded’ in the technical, computer science sense: it has lots of different meanings which can be used only somewhat interchangeably. The overall semantics might be broadly the same, but you’ll quickly run into trouble if you use the wrong one.

I think two different senses of ‘identity’ that are relevant here are:

1. Stuff I make up in my head. How I feel. What I want to be seen as. Let’s call this ‘idenniny’.

2. Assertions made about me by the proper official bodies, documents etc. Let’s call this ‘identity’.

So on … Read the rest

More from Luke Easley:

BC: It is clearly not a proselytising blog. Sets out issues, invites discussion.
LE: I disagree.

— Tribunal Tweets (@tribunaltweets) March 15, 2022

“Offensive” he whines. Easy for him. Predatory men aren’t a threat to him.

BC: Did you understand that there are two parts to the argument for single sex spaces. The first is that most acts of violence are committted by men and women need single sex spaces for that reason
LE: Understand that now yes

— Tribunal Tweets (@tribunaltweets) March 15, 2022

He understands it now. He’s the HR guy, and was the HR guy when they pushed Maya out, but he didn’t understand that there are predatory men, and that women have … Read the rest

Joan Smith on Keir Starmer’s Message to the Estonians:

Employing the forensic skills that made him a QC, he homed in on the most significant issue of the day: “Trans women are women”, he declared. “And that is not just my view — that is actually the law”.

The Estonians may have thought they had bigger things to worry about, what with Putin having his tantrum right next door, but Starmer knew better.

To be cruelly frank, women are being gaslighted. Labour’s leaders say they believe in single-sex spaces, but what does that mean when they also insist that trans women are no different from natal women? Starmer’s own position is a statement of the law as he

There’s just so much daftery in Luke Easley’s replies at the tribunal.

BC: This presupposes claimaints views would damage that
LE: More about actions
BC: Why mention misgendering, MF had told you she would not.
LE: Didn't feel sure that was 100% sure

— Tribunal Tweets (@tribunaltweets) March 15, 2022

In other words the head of HR at this economics research institution “had a problem” with renewing Maya’s contract because he thought she might possibly “misgender” someone even though she had told him she would not. Apart from anything else it’s just so tiny and childish.

BC: You say no final decision taken at the meeting
LE: yes
BC 3 options on the table: a) renew fellowship b) don't renew

Lia gonna make history this week.

This week, a male collegiate swimmer who identifies as a woman will compete in the women’s NCAA Div. 1 Women’s Swimming & Diving Championships. Lia Thomas is the top seed in both the 200-yard and 500-yard freestyle races and will make history as one of the first openly transgender athletes in women’s collegiate sports, no matter how he performs.

It’s a crappy kind of history to make though – embarrassing as opposed to glorious. Or not so much embarrassing as shameful. Shameful of him, and shameful of all the people letting it happen. People would get this if it were a huge muscular man “making history” by playing Little League baseball, but somehow … Read the rest

Wait though. Hold the phone. We may have a case of corpsephobia here.

Corpsegender is a xenogender so surely Luke Easley is violating his own principles.… Read the rest

His view.

But then Luke Easley is denying Maya’s reality, and not only Maya’s but many other people’s too, many many many other people’s. Furthermore he’s denying an objective, material, factual reality, and furthermore again he’s denying an objective reality that is at the root of the fundamental human inequality, that between women and men. That’s a lot of reality-denial for a guy who wants to banish women for denying an eccentric new fantasy-based “reality” about being Born In The Wrong Body.… Read the rest

Life under Russian occupation:

Russian soldiers patrol the streets of Berdyansk in cars and armoured vehicles marked with the “Z” symbol that denotes the Russian occupying force.

Local government officials in this city in southern Ukraine, which has been controlled by Russian troops for the past two weeks, have been kicked out of their offices, and the local radio station plays Soviet ballads and Russian pop songs, interspersed with excerpts from Vladimir Putin’s speeches and news items about Ukraine being “liberated from Nazis”.

Many towns in southern Ukraine are already under Russian occupation.

In Berdyansk, a port city to the west of Mariupol with a population of a little over 100,000, the majority of city councillors have remained loyal

From the Maya Forstater tribunal today [LE is Luke Easley, a Vice President at the Center for Global Development]:

BC: We have a tweet saying ,so if a load of people stopped identifying as women they could get paid more, stop being harassed. Do you understand point claimant is making?

— Tribunal Tweets (@tribunaltweets) March 14, 2022

BC: Is your point that claimant must not express belief in importance, relevance, immutability of sex at all – because you think that's denying some people's reality?

— Tribunal Tweets (@tribunaltweets) March 14, 2022

LE: identify is reality – without identity there's jsut a corpse

BC: I suggest that you are struggling with this because you can't step outside your own views

—

The first two sentences of this Spectator piece by Stephen Daisley need a post of their own before I read the rest.

Sir Keir Starmer’s interpretation of the Equality Act has caused something of a stir. The Labour leader cited the Brown-era legislation to support his assertion that ‘trans women are women’ and that this ‘happens to be the law in the United Kingdom’.

What does equality have to do with the assertion that “trans women are women”?

Even if the Act does say that (which apparently it doesn’t), what does equality have to do with it? Nothing. “Equality” doesn’t mean “you get to force everyone to agree with whatever you say about yourself.” Even if the fatuous repetition of … Read the rest