The Come Out of Stonewall protest:

Behind us is a statue of George Orwell & the quote, “if liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people that which they do not wish to hear” #comeoutofstonewall pic.twitter.com/4BbEArvwJM

— Lily Maynard (@LilyLilyMaynard) October 22, 2021

That’s our mate latsot in the wheelchair in front.

It’s good that there are always dinosaurs now.… Read the rest

Ceri Black (Ceri pronounced like Kerry) spoke at a Belfast protest today.

I’m here to stand against the protection racket that is the diversity champion’s scheme, and to call for employers to join the flood of others who have left it.

But I hope you don’t mind if I take this opportunity to speak about what’s been happening to me over the last 48 hours instead of the speech I originally prepared.

You may know this already, but a man has managed to persuade the police to invite me to an interview, under caution, regarding my twitter account, @femmeloves.

I did know it already. It’s That Man Again.

If it were not prohibited by the twitter terms of service,

… Read the rest

Define the rights you’re talking about, OJ.

If this piece was a proper piece of journalism, it would note that Kathleen Stock signed the "WHRC Declaration on Women’s Sex-Based Rights, which Sussex University students contend seeks to abolish trans rights".

But there's no reference to it at all.https://t.co/Pyxh7M7wEK

— Owen Jones (@OwenJones84) October 21, 2021

If this piece were a proper piece of journalism – the counter-factual subjunctive exists for a reason. (Of course, the piece is a proper piece of journalism, but OJ is claiming it isn’t, but doing it badly, because he doesn’t write well.)

But the substantive point here is that the LGB Alliance is not “anti-trans rights” and that OJ is smuggling the claim in … Read the rest

Love is not a human right and neither is sex. (Remember when Amnesty International decided it is? I do. How can you make sex a human right without implying a requirement? Who are the people who would be most subject to that requirement?)

This morning the Court of Appeal handed down a long-awaited judgment in the case of Re C, a legal case fraught with tension due to the sensitive and complex nature of what lay at its heart.

In short, C, a learning-disabled man, wished to seek out the “services” of a prostituted woman to pay her for sexual access, but he lacked the mental capacity to make such arrangements for himself.

One of several legal issues

… Read the rest

Amnesty UK has a stupid mealy-mouthed blamey “statement” distancing itself from the “suck my dick you cunts”- type activism at the FiLiA event.

We have a long history of campaigning against violence against women and this continues to be a vital part of our work.

But they’ve forgotten who women are, and which people are women.

We are equally committed to campaigning for the rights of transgender people to live freely, authentically, and openly, and to have their gender legally recognised without having to go through a dehumanising, long and costly procedure. 

But the “right” of transgender people to live “authentically” entails requiring everyone to agree with them that they are their new gender in every possible sense, in other … Read the rest

Updating to add: the photo is probably (or certainly?) a fake. Just look at it as a pretty imagining.

A snapshot from the International Space Station. That’s a little item called South America.

I had no idea the moon looked like that from the ISS. … Read the rest

I hope they lock him up.

 The House voted Thursday to hold Steve Bannon, a longtime ally and aide to former President Donald Trump, in contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena from the committee investigating the violent Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection.

…

The House vote sends the matter to the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, where it will now be up to prosecutors in that office to decide whether to present the case to a grand jury for possible criminal charges. It’s still uncertain whether they will pursue the case — Attorney General Merrick Garland would only say at a House hearing on Thursday that they plan to “make a decision consistent with the principles of prosecution.”

… Read the rest

Update on that rape on the train story:

Passengers did not sit around and record cellphone video of a rape aboard a SEPTA train for their own gratification without contacting authorities, Delaware County’s top prosecutor said Thursday.

The revelation from District Attorney Jack Stollsteimer runs counter to the police narrative of the rape on a SEPTA Market-Frankford elevated train at the 69th Street Terminal in Upper Darby. Police said in that case that passengers took cellphone video without calling 911 before a SEPTA employee called police.

“There is a narrative out there that people sat there on the El train and watched this transpire and took videos of it for their own gratification,” Stollsteimer said using the nickname for

… Read the rest

Gaby Hinsliff on yet another way to keep women down:

Yet reports of so-called “spiking by needle” – young women on a night out allegedly being injected by unseen strangers with something that knocks them out – are being taken seriously by police in cities including Nottingham, Edinburgh and Glasgow. Heartbreakingly, there have been reports of nervous women going out in thick, needle-proof jeans and leather jackets. However rare these incidents may turn out to be, they fit a pattern of behaviour that for many feels horribly familiar.

Emphasis on the horrible. The pattern is that women aren’t real people, women don’t matter, women have no rights, women are walking cunts who exist to receive men’s penises. … Read the rest

Then there was dancing with our extinct friends.

Dancing with dinosaurs pic.twitter.com/jZePCcIGmY

— Dennis Noel Kavanagh (@Jebadoo2) October 21, 2021

Get down.

Terfasauras Rex on the dance floor pic.twitter.com/T5HVYkvG7A

— Dennis Noel Kavanagh (@Jebadoo2) October 21, 2021

… Read the rest

Today in “I wish I could teleport to London” –

Look who she found! Lovely to see @simonjedge @DreyfusJames and Graham!#LGBAlliance2021 pic.twitter.com/JaduoGpNfS

— For Women Scotland (@ForWomenScot) October 21, 2021

‘Do right and fear no one.’ @BluskyeAllison addresses #LGBAlliance2021 about the importance of protecting #LGB rights as well as Trans rights & #FreeSpeech pic.twitter.com/X1GWPnhSYV

— Joanna Cherry KC (@joannaccherry) October 21, 2021

Vast Sex Matters infrastructure at #LGBAlliance2021 – say hi if you’re around! pic.twitter.com/UIMmCSRKuO

— Sex Matters (@SexMattersOrg) October 21, 2021

Oh, man, look at all that infrastructure. No wonder they’re getting sexual threats.

Agree/disagree whatevs but stop with the coercive abusive male pattern sexual threats. It is not a good look. Why are there no adults in

… Read the rest

Finally.

Over the past two weeks, the University of Sussex has vigorously and unequivocally defended Professor Kathleen Stock’s right to exercise her academic freedom and lawful freedom of speech. These freedoms apply to and benefit us all. (1/5)

— University of Sussex (@SussexUni) October 21, 2021

This is all the more important when the rights of people to hold the beliefs in question are protected by law, as is the case for those with gender-critical views, which is a protected philosophical belief. (3/5)

— University of Sussex (@SussexUni) October 21, 2021

The University cannot and will not tolerate discrimination based on protected characteristics, including sex and philosophical belief, and we will take action through our policies and procedures if this

… Read the rest

Ah yes, if the science says fossil fuels are cooking the planet the thing to do is…lobby to change what the science says.

A huge leak of documents seen by BBC News shows how countries are trying to change a crucial scientific report on how to tackle climate change.

The leak reveals [that] Saudi Arabia, Japan and Australia are among countries asking the UN to play down the need to move rapidly away from fossil fuels.

Similarly, if your house is on fire, the thing to do is take the phone away from the damn fool who is calling the fire department and call for pizza instead.

The leaked documents consist of more than 32,000 submissions made by

… Read the rest

I started re-reading Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye last night and there’s a very resonant passage about girls and puberty in chapter 17. The adult narrator starts with her childhood friend [it’s complicated] Cordelia:

Breasts fascinate Cordelia, and fill her with scorn. Both of her older sisters have them by now. Perdie and Mirrie sit in their room with its twin beds and sprigged-muslin flounces, filing their nails, laughing softly; or they heat brown wax in little pots in the kitchen and take it upstairs to spread on their legs. They look into their mirrors, making sad faces – “I look like Haggis McBaggis! It’s the curse!” Their wastebaskets smell of decaying flowers.

They tell Cordelia there are some things she’s

… Read the rest

The quislings emerge.

https://twitter.com/loyaladvisor/status/1450872050101465096 https://twitter.com/loyaladvisor/status/1450872052890673155

Her “overarching concern for vulnerable people,” she says, as if women were invulnerable. Men who pretend to be women are not more vulnerable than women. They’re not as vulnerable as women either. If our overarching concern is for vulnerable people then it’s extremely bizarre to choose people brandishing flares and shouting threats from behind masks over one woman being abused and harassed by the masked shouters.

And what is “the harm caused”?

And how are the group in question more “vulnerable and marginalized” than women? Since when do women hold all the cards? Since when are women made of stone while men are made of gauze and smoke?

Miserable sneaking coward.… Read the rest

Sarah Ditum points out what a disaster it is when a lobby group is also providing training to public bodies on the very issue it lobbies for.

And behind the scenes, let’s say this lobby group is influencing the policies of the BBC, so that before the debate can ever take place, one side has already written the terms in which it will happen. If you wanted to complain about that to the ombudsman, don’t bother: the lobby group also has the ear of Ofcom.

Quite an advantage, isn’t it.

It’s already happening. The issue is the introduction of gender identity in law; the lobby group is Stonewall, the LGBT rights group; and the consequence has been one of the

… Read the rest

Harry Lambert at the New Statesman on Sussex and Stock:

On Saturday 16 October nearly one hundred people took over an open day at the University of Sussex to protest the employment of Kathleen Stock, a professor of philosophy. “Stock out!” “Get Kathleen off our campus!” “No Terfs here!” rang the chants. “Don’t come to Sussex!” they warned visitors.

They handed out an illiterate leaflet to explain their “reasons.”

When I visited Stock recently, she spoke haltingly of the slow burn of her social isolation at Sussex, punctured as it has been by the discovery of new online attacks and internal emails undermining her in the wake of any publicity she attracts.

Oh that must be nice – knowing … Read the rest

This is of course what they all think.

If you look at the entire history of social justice in liberal societies, the passage of time has always shown the "social justice warriors" to be in the right. I don't know why anti-trans people think it will be any different this time around.

— Magdi Jacobs (@magi_jay) October 19, 2021

It’s what they all think, but it’s stupid. Which “social justice warriors” are we talking about? Lots of people see themselves as on the side of justice, including social justice in some sense. They don’t all call themselves social justice warriors (but then neither do all “social justice warriors”), but they of course see themselves as on the side of the … Read the rest

Nope.

Dr. Rachel Levine was sworn in as the first female four-star admiral in the history of the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, a uniformed service of more than 6,000 health, science and engineering professionals.https://t.co/vR69Ae18qB pic.twitter.com/94phwg83KO

— The New York Times (@nytimes) October 19, 2021

Not the first female four-star admiral. The first trans four-star admiral, not the first female. There has been no first female four-star admiral yet.

The Times itself got the headline right but somehow got the tweet wrong? Another case of the social media intern erasing women?… Read the rest

Ellen Pasternack at The Critic tells us of a terf-spotting guide for the imperiled students at Cambridge.

… just last week, Cambridge University Student Union (CUSU) published a guide to identifying something called “TERF ideology”, featuring section headings such as Spotting TERFS in the Field and Signs Of A TERF. We learn from this guide that “the language of TERFS is ever changing” and that “the unique danger of TERF rhetoric is that it is styled to sound like feminism”.

Nah it’s not styled to sound like feminism, it is feminism. That’s what the F is for. It’s also not rhetoric, it’s critical thinking.

This eight page guide, intended for incoming students at the Freshers’ Fair, is an

… Read the rest