Originally a comment by tigger the wing on Women’s fault.

This is how I remember things were for those of us born in the fifties. When I left secondary school in 1976, all general education was still being run, and paid for, by the government. So they had a vested interest in making sure that, insofar as possible, only those teens who would stick at studying and actually gain a good degree were funnelled into university. So kids were tested at eleven to assess what kind of further learning they were suited to, and the more academically-minded kids were sent to grammar (arts and sciences track) and technical (engineering track) schools, and those of a more practical bent were … Read the rest

WHAT???????????

Just when you think the absurdity of victim blaming could not possibly go any further, here is a Police Commissioner openly blaming Sarah Everard for what happened to her on BBC radio https://t.co/brN6rRSf2q #FixTheSystemNotTheWomen pic.twitter.com/eja5uJp7z2

— EverydaySexism (@EverydaySexism) October 1, 2021

Yes definitely because the police are always so understanding when people resist arrest, as everyone knows. So stupid of Sarah Everard not to shout “NO!” and flag down a bus (because there is always a bus coming down the street at any given moment, and the drivers always stop for people waving at them nowhere near a bus stop).

The BBC has the aftermath:

A police boss who said women “need to be streetwise” about powers of

The Stonewall thread:

Amidst the current manufactured moral panic around trans people, it's important that governing bodies' policies are based on solid evidence about the reality of sport & inclusion.

The new guidance fails to properly reflect that safe, fair trans inclusion in sport already exists.

— Stonewall (@stonewalluk) September 30, 2021

Sport plays an important role in giving people pride, and a sense of community and belonging.

Sport should be a safe haven for trans people, just as much as it is for anyone else. The new guidance destabilises the progress that has already been made for trans inclusion.

— Stonewall (@stonewalluk) September 30, 2021

Sinister liars. If they succeed in making sport a “safe haven” for trans women … Read the rest

Stonewall.

The truth is that trans women are already participating in sports, without any evidence of unfair advantages or safety risks.

The guidance fails to properly reflect that in its data, and serves only to create confusing distinctions for sporting bodies to navigate.

— Stonewall (@stonewalluk) September 30, 2021

Without any evidence?… Read the rest

Not making history:

Two German politicians from the Greens have made history by becoming the first transgender women to win parliamentary seats in Sunday’s national election.

Two men have won parliamentary seats in Sunday’s national election.

That’s not making history. The fact that they call themselves trans women doesn’t make it history.

“It is a historic victory for the Greens, but also for the trans-emancipatory movement and for the entire queer community,” Ganserer, 44, told Reuters, adding that the results were a symbol of an open and tolerant society.

What do trans people need emancipation from?

Topping the priority list for Ganserer, who was elected to Bavaria’s regional parliament in 2013, is an easier procedure for ratifying a change

And what are these bad clever women supposed to do?

Men fall behind women, and that’s a problem

More female graduates will change work for the better but create a dangerous pool of underachieving and alienated men.

Oh I see, it’s our fault. We create dangerous pools of alienated men who don’t do much. How do we create them? By being cleverer and doing more. The evil just never ends, does it. It might be best to kill most of us off, even things out a little.

Via

Well that doesn't sound remotely threatening to "over-achieving" women https://t.co/AgQd0qTHfH pic.twitter.com/uJK3aXlVFW

— Victoria Smith (@glosswitch) October 1, 2021

… Read the rest

It seems the police had plenty of hints about Wayne Couzens but didn’t act on them.

The Guardian understands that an investigation into Couzens’s phone, which was seized after he was arrested for the attack on Everard, revealed he was part of a WhatsApp group involving police officers now under investigation over alleged misogynistic, racist and homophobic messages, sources say.

…

New details of previous indecent exposure claims against Couzens emerged on Thursday. A man was accused of being naked from the waist down in a car in Kent in 2015, and of twice exposing himself at a London McDonald’s days before the murder, with details of cars linked to Couzens in both instances passed to police.

A simple registration

You couldn’t make it up.

The chief safeguarding officer at the British Kickboxing Council lists Fallon Fox as an inspiration. pic.twitter.com/vQ8vA4ZwGR

— Emma Hilton (@FondOfBeetles) September 30, 2021

Fallon FOX?????? He’s the trans-identified guy who broke a woman’s orbital bone, aka eye socket, in a fight.

Some safeguarding inspiration.… Read the rest

Dangerous to women? Meh. We don’t care.

Today's SCEG report is NOT mandatory for NGBs. Trans people have every right to participate in sport at ALL levels without discrimination; we will continue to follow our current policy, which maintains a fair and unbiased approach.#Fight4Equality #InYourCorner #EqualityForAll pic.twitter.com/geNkAasTiC

— British Kickboxing Council (BKC) (@thebkc) September 30, 2021

Fight 4 the equal right of men to kickbox women.… Read the rest

Graham Linehan responds to Matt Lucas, starting with a phone call from Lucas a few months ago begging not to be cited for throwing women under passing buses.

He told me that with a big gig coming up, he had to stay out of trouble. I agreed to lay off, because he seemed to understand that he had called the whole thing wrong.

So Lucas shits on the LGB Alliance anyway.

Matt, I’ll say again what I just sent you in a text. Kate and Bev have been fighting for the rights of gay and gender-nonconforming people since before you were born. Allison Bailey is a lesbian barrister who Stonewall tried to have fired for standing up for her

Not literally “whole” though.

It’s not his whole life. It’s what remains of his life, but that’s not the whole of it. It is in fact a much smaller piece of his life than the piece he stole from Sarah Everard by murdering her after he raped her. He’s 48.… Read the rest

Another witness testifies.

The LGB Alliance is an anti-trans group. That’s all it is. It doesn’t represent me or any gay people I care to know.

— Matt Lucas HQ (@RealMattLucas) September 30, 2021

What does he mean by “anti-trans”? That the LGB Alliance wants to harm trans people, or exploit them, or oppress them?

No, of course not, he just means that the LGB Alliance doesn’t view trans people as literally the sex they identify as, and that it defends the rights of lesbians and gay men.

So you don’t know any lesbians excluded from LGBT groups for “transphobia” (i.e. only being attracted to other females)? Or LGB detransitioners who now live with the results of unnecessary medicalization –

Victoria Smith quotes Andrea Dworkin’s “The only good woman is a dead woman.”

Self-styled good men are very good at feeling sad about women that bad men have killed. They are not so good at thinking these bad men might have anything to do with them, let alone that the “epidemic” of male violence against women and girls might be the responsibility of male people as a sex class. They’re worse still at listening to women who might have an analysis — one built up over decades of feminist scholarship in addition to personal experience — into why male people, and not female ones, feel entitled to do what they do. These men are good at seeing

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