Suzanne Moore on JKR v Humza Yousaf:

Humza Yousaf had been warned that this legislation was unworkable by numerous women’s groups. Men who identified as women were protected but women weren’t. How on earth were the police going to deal with this?

Who would blink first? Rowling or the police? When what she said was not deemed a hate crime, everything began to fall apart. “Oh, it’s OK for her with her wealth” some said and there she was again, asserting that if any other woman was arrested, she would repeat those words and be arrested alongside them.

Here was a lesson in solidarity, in sisterhood and the simple but incendiary power of saying no.

Much of this

Yousaf pretends his thrilling new law is not aimed at defiant women:

Humza Yousaf said he was “not surprised” police had assessed JK Rowling’s online posts challenging the new hate crime law to be non-criminal.

Well no, I’m sure he wasn’t surprised, because I’m sure he knew that the police know better than to tangle with JKR as opposed to women who are not rich and famous.

Mr Yousaf told BBC Scotland News: “Those new offences that have been created by the act have a very high threshold for criminality. The behaviour has to be threatening or abusive and intends to stir up hatred. So it doesn’t deal with people just being offended or upset or insulted.”

That’s nice; … Read the rest

The BBC reports that phones teach boys to be aggressive misogynist little piggies.

Sexism is on the rise in schools because of harmful content on children’s phones, according to the National Education Union’s (NEU) general secretary. Daniel Kebede said boys watched “aggressive and violent pornography” and influencer content that “completely distorts their view of women”.

…

Mr Kebede’s comments come as teachers at the NEU conference, in Bournemouth, prepare to debate a motion about the rise of online misogyny and its impact in the classroom.

Kaspar Zeta-Skeet said there was an “assumption” among some teenagers he taught “that women are things just to be observed” and he had heard words such as “slut” and “whore” being used about female

Um. I don’t much want to promote Jonathan Choe, who is a Discovery Institute honcho of some kind, but I can’t just ignore this…eccentric public defender.

Due to popular demand, I'm posting the extended cut of my interview with public defender Stephanie Mueller. The transgender attorney is representing one of the far-left activists charged with disrupting a council meeting in February.
Otherwise, this is Seattle. What's the big… https://t.co/rYo4nrj9Wu pic.twitter.com/fuTP4qObvu

— Jonathan Choe (@choeshow) April 5, 2024

I don’t understand why it’s allowed. Courts wouldn’t allow a guy in a fuzzy bear costume to do the public defender thing would they? Or, more parallel to this guy’s prank, courts wouldn’t allow someone dressed up like Al Jolson in The Jazz … Read the rest

The Taliban promises to torture women to death:

The Taliban’s Supreme Leader has vowed to start stoning women to death in public as he declared the fight against Western democracy will continue.

“You say it’s a violation of women’s rights when we stone them to death,” said Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada in a voice message, aired on state television over the weekend, addressing Western officials. “But we will soon implement the punishment for adultery. We will flog women in public. We will stone them to death in public,” he declared in his harshest comments since taking over Kabul in August 2021.

“Harshest”? Careful, Telegraph, you don’t want to be too…er…harsh.

Also “comments”? I don’t call a promise to … Read the rest

Originally a comment by Artymorty on Well knock me down with a feather.

How have so many of them managed to convince themselves that children who “have doubts about their gender identity” are in touch with a great truth as opposed to just being uncomfortable in an ordinary way that dissipates over time? How have so many managed to convince themselves that it’s better to tamper with children’s sexes rather than watch and wait?

Nobody likes Nazi Germany analogies, but the phenomenon where everybody remains complicit even in the face of the worst atrocities under certain circumstances when the social system is arranged just-so… I suspect this has to be some kind of vestigial behavioural trait from our bygone … Read the rest

Originally a comment by Sastra on Well knock me down with a feather.

I think adults have accepted Great Truth Gender Pediatrics in part because of the popularity of child-centered parenting (which may also involve child-centered schooling, child-centered therapy, and, ultimately, child-centered spirituality.) Though we need an antidote to the authoritarian “obey me without question” boogeyman-man method of parental control, the belief that children are fragile, unique flowers needing mostly love and acceptance to bloom can deteriorate rapidly into nonsense. In our rush to validate their feelings, we treat kids like miniature adults— which, as you point out, they aren’t.

Our own recollections of what it was like to be a child might actually be part of the problem … Read the rest

Five men on a women’s team. Not one not two not three not four but five.

Reduxx can confirm that a trans activist YouTuber is among five trans-identified males currently participating on a women’s football team in North West Sydney, Australia. Riley Dennis, who was previously accused of severely injuring women while participating on another women’s team, is now playing for The Flying Bats, which has been dominating women’s football in the region.

Gee, I wonder why.

The Flying Bats Football Club secured a 4-0 victory against the Macquarie Dragons on March 24, and of their five trans-identified players, the highest goal-scorer is a male trans activist who injured two female players during a match last year.

The

The Times on the Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre hearing:

A rape crisis centre run by a trans woman has been “illegitimately” hiding the biological sex of its counsellors from victims of sexual assault, an employment tribunal has heard.

Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre, whose chief executive is Mridul Wadhwa, a trans woman and activist, was said to have used “disciplinary processes to enforce its extreme and uncompromising version of gender identity theory”.

Isn’t that what rape crisis centres are for, though?

No, it damn well is not.

The dispute began when [support worker Roz Adams] consulted colleagues about a rape victim who had asked if her counsellor would be a “man or a woman” because she would feel “uncomfortable

A study finds what we pretty much knew already:

Most gender-confused children grow out of it.

The majority of gender-confused children grow out of that feeling by the time they are fully grown adults, according to a long-term study. Researchers in the Netherlands tracked more than 2,700 children from age 11 to their mid-twenties, asking them every three years of feelings about their gender.

Results showed at the start of the research, around one-in-10 children (11 percent) expressed ‘gender non-contentedness‘ to varying degrees. But by age 25, just one-in-25 (4 percent) said they ‘often’ or ‘sometimes’ were discontent with their gender.

The researchers concluded: ‘The results of the current study might help adolescents to realize that it

The Guardian taking care to insult women right in the headline:

‘I’m as baffled as the next ovary-owner’: navigating the science of treating menopause

The subhead:

Conversations about menopause have matured but the question of when and how to treat perimenopausal symptoms remains confusing – even to a science journalist

Conversations about menopause have matured but we’re calling women “ovary-owners”? How do you square those two items?

I wonder how often The Guardian calls men “testicle-owners.”… Read the rest

They ran out of time.

It’s a pity that Scottish journalists interviewing India Willoughby today did not ask about this late night tweet fantasising about kidnapping me, J. K. Rowling & Maya Forstater. Police took it seriously enough to visit & issue advice and a warning. pic.twitter.com/jNsxqUgMMY

— Joanna Cherry KC (@joannaccherry) April 3, 2024

You see it’s like this. When a guy like India Willoughby publicly fantasizes about kidnapping Joanna Cherry, Maya Forstater, and JK Rowling, it’s social justice. When we talk about guys like India Willoughby fantasizing about kidnapping women who make him angry, it’s transphobia, and deserving of harsh punishment, like kidnapping for example. Head Willoughby wins, tails women lose.… Read the rest

Originally a comment by Artymorty on And finally move on.

The corollary of the argument that only trans people should be allowed to play trans characters is that trans isn’t a neutral attribute that can be ignored.

Speaking to GQ magazine, Schafer said being known simply as a “trans actress” was “ultimately demeaning to me and what I want to do”. She continued: “I’ve been offered tons of trans roles, and I just don’t want to do it. I don’t want to talk about it.”

In a sense I get what he means, or what he thinks he means: something like how, say, Black actors were tired of playing “Black” characters, instead of just regular characters who happened to … Read the rest

Wait what century is this?

Woman removed from flight for not wearing a bra

Lisa Archbold was due to fly from Salt Lake City to San Francisco when airline staff, she said, took issue with her clothing — a loose white T-shirt.

The incident was in January and received some media attention, but Archbold now has legal representation. Her attorney is Gloria Allred, who has been involved in several high-profile women’s rights cases — including representing women who accused Donald Trump and R. Kelly of sexual misconduct.

In a recent letter to the airline’s president, Allred said Archbold wasn’t questioned when she boarded the plane but was later escorted off the flight by a Delta gate agent.

For wearing … Read the rest

Good luck with that, pal.

Euphoria actress Hunter Schafer has said she no longer wants to play transgender roles. The 25-year-old transgender star shot to fame playing a trans character, Jules Vaughn, in HBO’s hit teen drama.

But Schafer said she felt she could go further as an actress by “not making it the centrepiece to what I’m doing”. She said: “I worked so hard to get to where I am, past these really hard points in my transition, and now I just want to be a girl and finally move on.”

That’s not going to happen. The entertainment industry is about making money, it’s not about showing off one’s trans-allyship. The people who make movies and tv dramas … Read the rest

Willoughby longs for a trans woman to be murdered so that he can claim they are Uniquely Vulnerable.

Meanwhile in March 2023:

Labour MP Jess Phillips took more than five minutes to read a list of women killed over the past 12 months where the perpetrator or suspect was a man.

Before entering the Commons chamber on Thursday, she had to add another name to the list in pen – that of Helen Harrison, who was found dead in Yorkshire on Sunday.

Bereaved families, including the newly formed group Killed Women, reacted angrily to the fact that just three male MPs were present for the reading of the names a day after International Women’s Day.

Well, you know … Read the rest

Uppity women are Karens, or if they’re not Karens then they’re whiny hysterical babies.

Describing a pregnant woman as “very emotional and tearful” in the workplace amounted to discrimination, a tribunal has ruled. The ruling relates to an email sent by the boss of an account manager after she raised concerns about her workload.

…

Roger Tynan, an employment judge, said Hinds’s boss, Nav Kalley, had stereotyped her as “an emotional, hormonal pregnant woman and that in the particular circumstances his description of her as emotional and tearful was dismissive and belittling”.

That’s one version of The Art of Making Women Shut Up and Go Away. Another is this flower:

The full tweet reads:

Beautifully nuanced & punches

Now isn’t she crafty.

Social media comments made by JK Rowling challenging Scotland’s new hate crime law are not being treated as criminal, Police Scotland has said. The Harry Potter author described several transgender women as men, including convicted prisoners, trans activists and other public figures.

The new law creates a new crime of “stirring up hatred” relating to protected characteristics. The force said complaints had been received but no action would be taken.

Reacting to the news, Ms Rowling posted on X: “I hope every woman in Scotland who wishes to speak up for the reality and importance of biological sex will be reassured by this announcement, and I trust that all women – irrespective of profile or

King Lear without the peripeteia.

It took Donald Trump less than 24 hours to test the boundaries of Judge Juan Merchan’s gag order in his New York criminal trial.

In two posts on his Truth Social account, the former president attacked Merchan for issuing the gag order – and he went after the judge’s daughter for her liberal political work, exploiting the ambiguous language in the order that didn’t explicitly forbid discussion of Merchan’s family.

On Monday, Merchan pushed back, expanding the gag order to cover his family – though the judge remains fair game for Trump – and attempting to limit Trump’s vitriol two weeks before the trial is set to begin.

Merchan’s need to issue a second gag order highlights the significant and unique challenge that

The Beeb reports a scandal:

The prime minister has said people should not be criminalised “for stating simple facts on biology” in response to JK Rowling’s criticism of Scotland’s new hate crime law.

Cue global gasps. What can he mean?? People should be beheaded for such an outrage.

The author took to social media to hit out at criticize the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act which came into effect on Monday.

Seriously, Beeb – stop that. Stop calling dissent you dislike “hitting out at.” It’s childish at best. Some metaphors are best left on the cutting room floor.

In a series of social media posts, Ms Rowling described several transgender women as men, including convicted prisoners, trans