Yes yes, that’s right, we’re the ones who are saying the equivalent of “the moon is made of apple pie.”

Who is Abigail Thorn?

Abigail Thorn is a British actress (formerly known as Oliver Thorn; born 24 April 1993)… Thorn publicly came out as a transgender woman in January 2021.

So Thorn doesn’t have a female body, Thorn isn’t biologically female. It’s just lying, this kind of thing – unabashed brazen lying. It’s gaslighting in its most basic sense. It may be true that Thorn thinks he “feels like” a woman, but if it’s true that he came out as a trans woman last January then it’s not true that he has a female body. (It could be … Read the rest

Breathtaking.

They published it together with this cartoon in which "our cartoonist considers whether it is always necessary to offer a right of reply in order to achieve a balanced debate"

Thanks for the solidarity Index,
Yours – women who are being silenced. pic.twitter.com/leh6DUtpAz

— Maya Forstater (@MForstater) September 29, 2021

… Read the rest

Sean Ingle at the Graun reports:

Trans women retain physique, stamina and strength advantages when competing in female sport, even when they reduce their testosterone levels, new guidelines for transgender participation in national and grassroots sport published by the UK sports councils will say on Thursday.

The long-awaited report argues there is no magic solution which balances the inclusion of trans women in female sport while guaranteeing competitive fairness and safety. And, for the first time, it tells sports across Britain that they will have to choose which to prioritise.

See I don’t think it should be a difficult choice. Competitive sport has never been about “inclusion” in the sense of “include everyone regardless of how unfair or dangerous … Read the rest

That’s just a pointless headline and a pointless lede.

Women’s and trans rights are not in conflict, says Angela Rayner

That depends on what rights you’re talking about. It’s meaningless to say that without defining anything.

“Women’s rights are not in conflict with trans rights,” Labour’s deputy leader has told a fringe event at the party’s conference.

Depends. Which rights? The right to get on with your life and not face abuse? Sure. The right to compete against women in sport, to take jobs and awards meant for women, to run rape crisis centers? Those are definitely in conflict with women’s rights.

Ms Rayner said it was wrong to suggest there was choice to be made between women’s and trans

Harry Lambert at the New Statesman starts his piece on Helen Joyce’s book with an observation:

When the Labour government introduced the Gender Recognition Act in 2004, few involved in its implementation expected that 17 years later Britain’s leading medical journal, the Lancet, would refer to women as “bodies with vaginas” in an effort to be gender inclusive.

That phrase is the latest in a string of new and unusual terms (“people who menstruate”, “birthing people”, “bleeders”) used to describe women. This change in language is the product of a rapid shift in Western culture towards the idea that biological reality is a social construct.

Yes but what else? There’s another piece to this puzzle.

The what else is … Read the rest

How?

Lecturer in political theory. Cambridge too. pic.twitter.com/UdMkbg1ySl

— The Lies They Tell (@sarahstuartxx) September 29, 2021

“Sarah Everard was not murdered for her gender identity.” Sarah wrote. “She was murdered for her sex.” Shock horror responds the lecturer in political science, a woman. “This is just the worst take ever. How exactly do you think he knew her sex?”

Pause to straighten eyes after an excess of rolling.

How do we think he knew her sex? The usual way. The way men always have. On sight, to begin with – he has to have known her sex on sight or he wouldn’t have “arrested” her. On sight and then on hearing and touch and smell. He didn’t have to … Read the rest

“It’s probably the case that trans women don’t have ovaries, but a cervix, I understand, is something that you can have, following various procedures and hormone treatment and all the rest of it.”

.@NickFerrariLBC: "Is it transphobic to say only women can have a cervix?" @DavidLammy: "I am not sure it's transphobic but it's not accurate." pic.twitter.com/pnuUllbsaL

— LBC (@LBC) September 29, 2021

… Read the rest

The privilege of being a woman:

Sarah Everard was handcuffed by her murderer as he pretended to arrest her for breaching Covid guidelines.

Met Police officer Wayne Couzens abducted her as she walked home from a friend’s house in Clapham on 3 March.

Couzens showed his warrant card before restraining Ms Everard, 33, putting her in his hire car and driving away.

Driving away not to the nearest police station, but to Dover, where he transferred her to his own car. She must have known within minutes that he wasn’t arresting her. Dover is at least an hour from Clapham.

Couzens then drove to a remote rural area he knew well, where he raped Ms Everard. The sexual predator

Now David Lammy wants us to think it’s all a diversionary tactic.

In an interview on Wednesday morning shadow justice secretary David Lammy said Today programme presenter Nick Robinson was “deliberately asking me about an issue that you know does not come up on the doorstep.”

He shouted it more than said it. It was a performance of righteous indignation.

The issue was why Lammy had called Labour women “dinosaurs.”

Mr Lammy said: “You, the BBC, are choosing to land on this subject – that most British people aren’t talking about in a fuel crisis – and spend minutes on this because it keeps Labour talking about identity issues and not about the substantive policies that Keir will set

This is from an hour ago, 6 p.m. Pacific time, 9 p.m. Eastern time. The ACLU social media fools have learned NOTHING.

VICTORY: A federal judge just blocked an Arizona law that banned abortion based on certain reasons a person seeks care.

We’ll keep doing everything in our power to ensure no one is forced to carry a pregnancy against their will regardless of where they live.

— ACLU (@ACLU) September 29, 2021

It’s not a PERSON who seeks abortion, it’s a woman. If it were men seeking it no one would interfere with them.… Read the rest

Having to agree (mostly) with Reason again:

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is very sorry for rewriting a famous quote from the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg so that it would be gender neutral.

Well, no; unfortunately that’s what they didn’t say. It’s what Romero didn’t say. He said he regrets that it was said, but that’s different from saying he’s “very sorry” – which is apology language as opposed to regret language. I know it’s subtle but the subtle items are exactly the ones we have to be careful about.

“It was a mistake among the digital team,” said Anthony Romero, executive director of the ACLU. “Changing quotes is not something we ever did.”

That’s… Read the rest

Not again.

Abortion is basic health care, and everybody deserves to have access to it when they need it. #LatinxHeritageMonth #AbortionStories pic.twitter.com/ZKE6gHY9J7

— Planned Parenthood (@PPFA) September 19, 2021

Not “everybody,” every woman. Men don’t need access to abortion. Not “anybody that has a uterus,” any woman. No man has a uterus.

It’s because it’s women who need it that we have to fight for it.

It’s because women do the childbearing that women are subordinated.

It’s because men want to control women and their childbearing that access to abortion is something we have to campaign for and defend.… Read the rest

Another book by another Trump ex-employee with yet more detail on what a walking pile of garbage he is.

In her book, titled “I’ll Take Your Questions Now,” [Stephanie] Grisham recalls her time working for a president she said constantly berated her and made outlandish requests, including a demand that she appear before the press corps and re-enact a certain call with the Ukrainian president that led to Mr. Trump’s (first) impeachment, an assignment she managed to avoid.

Trump of course is saying it’s all lies.

“Stephanie didn’t have what it takes and that was obvious from the beginning,” Mr. Trump said in a statement on Tuesday. He said she had become “very angry and bitter” after a breakup. “She

A tweet by Ex-Muslims of North America inspired me to seek out the Quran Verse 53. It’s very amusing.

O you who believe, do not enter the houses of the Prophet, unless you are permitted for a meal, not (so early as) to wait for its preparation. But when you are invited, go inside. Then, once you have had the meal, just disperse, and (do) not (sit for long) being keen for a chat.

Heeheeheehee it’s so pious, so spiritual, so disinterested. Listen, guys, don’t keep showing up at my place hoping I’ll give you some lunch, wait until you’re fucking invited. And if I do invite you don’t fucking show up early – what am I supposed … Read the rest

This isn’t in the news yet so a tweet will have to do.

Shouts of “shame!” and boos as a Labour delegate tells the conference hall she stands with Rosie Duffield and she will defend her right to hold her views on biological sex.

— Isabel Hardman (@IsabelHardman) September 28, 2021

Shouts of “shame” and boos because women say that women are women.

The Times, annoyingly, says in the headline that Romero “apologized” for re-writing Ruth Bader Ginsburg. No he didn’t.

That’s not what happened.

Anthony Romero, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said Monday that he regretted that a tweet sent out recently by his organization altered the words of a well-known quote by the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Yes he regretted it, but he didn’t apologize. Regretting something isn’t the same as apologizing for it. You can regret forgetting to get coffee at the store without apologizing for it.

The tweet by the A.C.L.U. occasioned mockery and some anger on social media from feminists and others.

Some anger? Lots of anger. White-hot anger.

“We won’t

Michelle Goldberg in the Times yesterday on the ACLU’s insult to RBG and women:

This was a mistake for two reasons, one that’s easy to talk about, and one that’s hard.

The easy one is the “it’s bad to re-write the past this way” reason.

What’s more difficult to discuss is how making Ginsburg’s words gender-neutral alters their meaning. That requires coming to terms with a contentious shift in how progressives think and talk about sex and reproduction. Changing Ginsburg’s words treats what was once a core feminist insight — that women are oppressed on the basis of their reproductive capacity — as an embarrassing anachronism. The question then becomes: Is it?

Of course, I don’t find that one … Read the rest

Naturally this isn’t going down well.

Dear readers, in response to the Sept 25, 2021 cover of The Lancet, here is a statement from Richard Horton, Editor-in-Chief: https://t.co/d47J6v4kSC pic.twitter.com/J73HlJ7w1O

— The Lancet (@TheLancet) September 27, 2021

Especially when men are still called men by The Lancet. This was tweeted just days earlier, Sept 20, 2021. Why are they not “Bodies with Penises”?

Nothing in this apology means anything until they address that discrepancy. Did the editor actually think we wouldn’t notice? pic.twitter.com/UXe4fgQsmV

— LMOnTheSun (@ThereIsNoYouOn3) September 27, 2021

I know where I'd like it delivered…

— Josephine Liptrott (@Jo_Liptrott) September 27, 2021

https://twitter.com/EgaliteUK/status/1442587295345876999

I think bodies with penises would've been better.
Or perhaps penises with bodies.

— Bea Jaspert (@hogotheforsaken)

Labour List:

Shadow Justice Secretary David Lammy has told a Labour Party conference fringe event when discussing trans rights this morning that “there are some dinosaurs on the right” and also that “those dinosaurs exist in our own party” who want to “hoard rights”.

“Hoard rights”? Is that like hoarding sugar and butter during the war?

Asked at a fringe meeting today about the ongoing conflict in the party over the rights of transgender people, he said there is “always a debate when you’re extending rights to people who have been denied them for so long”.

What “rights” have trans people been denied for so long? The right to ignore gender conventions? Probably, somewhat, but then non-trans people have … Read the rest

Oh please.

Dear readers, in response to the Sept 25, 2021 cover of The Lancet, here is a statement from Richard Horton, Editor-in-Chief: https://t.co/d47J6v4kSC pic.twitter.com/J73HlJ7w1O

— The Lancet (@TheLancet) September 27, 2021

Blah blah blah blah fucking blah but when have they EVER talked about bodies with penises? Show me the cover that has “bodies with penises” on it. I’ll wait.… Read the rest