Meanwhile in good news –

Open University academic wins tribunal case over gender-critical views

A professor of criminology, who was compared with “a racist uncle at the Christmas table” because of her gender critical beliefs, has won an unfair dismissal claim against the Open University.

Prof Jo Phoenix, a lesbian who set up the Gender Critical Research Network (GCRN) at the OU, was also found to have suffered victimisation and harassment, as well as direct discrimination.

She becomes the latest in a series of gender critical feminists, who believe sex is biological, immutable and should be prioritised over gender identity, to win employment tribunals.

“Should be prioritised over gender identity” is a funny way of putting it. Gender … Read the rest

Wait.

It is if you believe yourself to the opposite sex. pic.twitter.com/zzHYynv2zb

— Dennis Noel Kavanagh (@Jebadoo2) January 22, 2024

Being trans isn’t a belief system?

Then what is it???

Of course it’s a belief system. Without that it’s nothing: just a vacancy.

Saying otherwise is like saying being Catholic or Muslim or Mormon is not a belief system.

Unless, perhaps, RMW is being nitpicky about the “being” bit. Being or calling yourself trans (or Mormon etc) isn’t itself a belief system, it’s trans or Mormon ideology that’s the belief system, but I really doubt RMW was being that nitpicky. I think he was saying trans ideology is not an ideology. Ha. It so is.… Read the rest

The Guardian cautiously explains:

Westminster city council and Social Work England last week became the latest to join a list of organisations – including Arts Council England, a barristers’ chambers and a thinktank – found to have discriminated against a female worker because of their gender-critical beliefs.

No, her gender-critical beliefs. Just four words past “a female worker” we get the terrified “their” – how pathetic is that?

The social worker Rachel Meade’s win against the council and her profession’s regulator means she joins a select but growing group of gender-critical feminists who have successfully brought discrimination claims on the basis of their beliefs.

Their “beliefs” ffs – as if it weren’t something everyone knew until about ten years … Read the rest

Analogy failure.

The “questions being asked” are of course questions about magic gender.

Notice that “they” starts by boasting of “their” in depth understanding of biological sex and gender – the kind of “in depth” understanding of course that thinks men are women if they say they are.

But that pales in comparison to announcing that non-adherence to gender ideology is comparable to racism, homophobia, and misogyny.

What a piggy little twerp.

Updating to add information about this genius:

Che Barnes is a Gender Diversity and Inclusion Trainer – helping organisations bridge their knowledge gap on Gender Equality, inc intersex, transgender & non-binary. Science based talks, workshops & online course.

I’m sure it’s all very in-depth.… Read the rest

Hindu nationalism marches on:

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi led the consecration on Monday of a grand temple to the Hindu god Lord Ram on a site believed to be his birthplace, in a celebratory event for the Hindu majority of the world’s most populous nation.

Believed by whom to be his birthplace? Certainly not everyone. Lord Ram is a “god”: a supernatural being. He wasn’t born anywhere, because he’s a fiction. He may be a very meaningful fiction, but that doesn’t make him a real person who had a real birthplace.

Hindu groups, Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and its affiliates have portrayed the temple opening as part of a Hindu renaissance after past centuries

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? at Miscellany Room 11.

Yet it’s gays and lesbian who are being smeared with the whole alphabet soup communniny phenomenon. It’s STRAIGHT men who are entering women’s sports and spaces, not gay men, yet you never hear of some HETEROTQAI+ communniny.

Excellent point. That’s why they’re so keen on enforcing “TWAW” and demanding the acceptance of transbians. They think it hides the paraphilia the same way they think they pass.

…the whole incoherent, asinine taxonomy of the trans system.

There’s forced teaming within the chimeric “trans community” itself, not just between the T and the LGB. What’s the common ground between AGP males forcing their way into women’s locker rooms for … Read the rest

Prizes for avoiding Bad words like “girls” and “boys”:

More than 300 schools have been told to stop calling pupils ‘boys and girls’ after signing up to a scheme run by a controversial trans rights lobbying group.

Primaries, secondaries and even nurseries teaching children as young as two receive awards from the charity Stonewall if they ‘remove any unnecessarily gendered language’ from the classroom.

They are urged to use ‘they’ instead of ‘he’/’she’ and ‘children’ or ‘young people’ instead of ‘boys and girls’. 

That’s pretty crappy journalism (Daily Mail; sorry), since it makes three conflicting claims in those three sentences. Which is it? Have schools been told to stop? Or are they being bribed to do so via awards? … Read the rest

Do hit the play button on this one.

Won’t somebody please think of the men who just want to cheat women? Their journey, their heartache, their fear?

Transgender golfer, Hailey Davidson, says she fears for her safety after winning a place on a US tour designed to provide 'growth opportunities' for female players.

She has been accused of having an unfair advantage because she can hit a ball further than a female born player. pic.twitter.com/iN1JGwOuD4

— Good Morning Britain (@GMB) January 22, 2024

Oh he’s been “accused of” having an unfair advantage has he? Just because he can hit a ball farther? It’s not that he obviously does have an unfair advantage and people are pointing it out, it’s that he’s accused by a bunch of unreasonable hatey … Read the rest

And then there’s Biden.

Today marks the third anniversary of President Biden signing EO 13988, "Preventing and Combating Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity or Sexual Orientation" (a.k.a., signaling his total contempt for women and girls as a sex class). @WDI_USA https://t.co/IA7q7MUVMr

— Kara Dansky (@KDansky) January 20, 2024

Rock, meet hard place.… Read the rest

Trump walking on water Trump will win we’re all doomed blah blah blah. The Guardian:

“The funny thing is that everything the other side seems to accuse Trump of they’re guilty of themselves,” said Steve Baird, 52, a chief financial officer. “I feel more that Biden seems to be running the country like a dictator with all his executive orders and everything else.

“Trump might be a billionaire but I feel more of a connection, that he’s more of a president for the people and that he’ll follow the constitution more than what the current establishment is doing.”

More of a connection. A president for the people. I bet I know what that is. It’s because Trump is so … Read the rest

Is there anything left in there?

Nikki Haley on Saturday questioned whether Donald Trump is mentally capable of serving as president again after he repeatedly seemed to confuse her with former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in a campaign speech.

As she campaigned in Keene, New Hampshire, Haley referenced Trump’s speech the night before, in which he mistakenly asserted that Haley was in charge of Capitol security on January 6, 2021, when a mob of Trump supporters stormed the building seeking to stop the certification of his loss to Democrat Joe Biden.

Trump first said that Haley turned down security offered by his administration on Jan. 6 and then again mentioned Haley, adding, “They destroyed all of the information, all

Oh we’re going here again are we?

On Friday, for example, Mr Trump took to social media to refer to Ms Haley as “Nimbra”, a misspelling of her birth name Nimarata, and to baselessly suggest she was ineligible to serve as president or vice president in the US.

The jab against the US-born Ms Haley – whose parents emigrated to the US from India in the 1960s – was reminiscent of the false birther attacks Mr Trump deployed against former President Barack Obama.

It’s all the more attractive in someone whose own paternal grandfather was not Born in the USA.… Read the rest

Worse and worser.

#Mridulgate has just become exponentially worse.

Mridul Wadhwa has, it seems NO CLINICAL QUALIFICATIONS.

He has only the following:
1. MSc in the Management of Training and Development from the University of Edinburgh, @EdinburghUni
2. BA English Literature from the…

— Dr P (@Psychgirl211) January 21, 2024

Before I go on to the rest of the tweet I’ll say that my first thought was “Do you need clinical qualifications to run a rape trauma center? Isn’t it a managerial job rather than a clinical one?” It was many other people’s first thought too, and the answer is that you don’t need them if you are indeed just managing but he hasn’t been just managing, he’s been “counseling” … Read the rest

A new consignment of geriatric shoe manufacturers from the ACLU via Chase Strangio:

In the span of just a few years, transgender people have had their rights and lives radically reshaped by a litany of political attacks against our freedom, our dignity, and the health care many of us need to live.

Wait a second. Who have had what “radically reshaped”? I’d have thought the radical reshaping was being done by surgeons like Sidhbh Gallagher of “yeet the teets” fame.

As part of a coordinated national effort to erode legal protections for trans people and push us out of public life, a wave of bills targeting gender-affirming health care for transgender people have effectively banned it for nearly one-third

Guardian rant by trans man Finn Mackay:

In December, five years later than promised, the Tories finally delivered draft, non-statutory guidance for schools on “gender questioning children”…

The document doesn’t tell us anything we don’t already know about this government’s hostile stance on trans identities, inclusion and rights; but, unfortunately, what it does do is further solidify in official documentation and language the politicised phrase “gender identity ideology”.

Well speaking of “politicised” what exactly do you mean by “trans rights”? What are they and how do you know?

It is in fact quite obvious what the government means by “gender identity ideology.” It means the ideology that claims men can be women and women can be men. … Read the rest

Central Oregon Daily News tells us via the US Attorney’s Office:

A federal grand jury in Eugene returned an indictment Thursday charging a Cottage Grove, Oregon, woman with posting a violent threat online, announced the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Oregon.

Elizabeth Ballesteros West, 56, has been charged with one count of transmitting an interstate threat.

According to court documents, in late September 2023, the FBI received an anonymous tip that West was threatening coworkers on Facebook. Later, in November 2023, the FBI learned West had established an account on X (formerly known as Twitter) that she was allegedly using to post and repost memes, videos and statements containing violent messages targeting Black and Jewish people and immigrants.

Here he is in person, calling women who don’t believe men like him are women “probably misogynist.”

Remember that time Sturgeon claimed that everyone who opposed self ID was racist, sexist etc etc.
I think she was just parroting the exact same lie that her friend Murdo had been spewing. pic.twitter.com/5erZjU3DEu

— Biology Rules Ok (@OkayBiology) January 20, 2024

… Read the rest

He is such a piece of work.

Mridul Wadhwa thought @JohannLamont's Forensic Medical Services #sixwords amendment was "transphobic" because it allowed a survivor to request a female examiner, rather that one of a certain "gender".

This man never cared about rape victims other than as a form of validation. https://t.co/qlTW1dmUEh

— For Women Scotland (@ForWomenScot) January 20, 2024

… Read the rest

Susan Dalgety on the mess at Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre:

Today, there are 17 rape crisis centres across Scotland, from Shetland to Dumfries and Galloway. In 2020-21, Rape Crisis Scotland – the movement’s national body – received more than £5 million for its sexual violence support work, much of it from the Scottish Government.

But as the movement evolved from a voluntary service to a professional one, the principle which underpinned it remained constant. Survivors of rape and sexual assault should have access to female-only support services. Women looking after each other in a way only women can understand. Until recently that is, when gender identity ideology, which dismisses the reality of biological sex, began to assert itself in