Ya uh huh.

Shakespeare’s plays were written by a woman and the clues are there in Romeo and Juliet and Othello, according to US author Jodi Picoult.

…

She believes there is plenty of evidence that Shakespeare did not write the works – most damningly, she says, a man who did not secure education for his daughters could not possibly have written “proto-feminist” characters.

Secure education for his daughters how? Send them to Oxford?

Moreover, Picoult says Shakespeare’s contemporaries knew that he was not the real author.

On the contrary, they knew that he was. Ben Jonson had always felt rivalrous toward him, and scornful of his lack of erudition or classical education…until he read the Folio and … Read the rest

The Daily Mail takes a cold hard look at the career of Mridul Wadhwa…while still, very unfortunately, using the deceptive pronouns. I realize that use is compelled in some way, but it needs to stop. It weakens any reporting on the subject that does it.

It was a post which was expressly advertised as being for women only but, three years ago this month, a biological male was installed in it. It required a compassionate figure to lead a charity providing a ‘safe space’ to help rape victims get through the worst experience of their lives.

The successful candidate was bullish and strident. Mridul Wadhwa labelled rape victims bigots and transphobes if they doubted whether a man identifying as

An exceptionally shameless lie:

Federal prosecutors on Friday asked the judge in Florida overseeing the classified documents case against Donald Trump to bar the former president from public statements that “pose a significant, imminent and foreseeable danger to law enforcement agents” participating in the prosecution.

The request was made to the federal district judge in the case, Aileen Cannon. It follows a distorted claim by Trump earlier this week that the FBI agents who searched his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, in August 2022 were “authorized to shoot me” and were “locked and loaded ready to take me out and put my family in danger”.

Not distorted so much as flagrantly untrue.

Trump was referring to the disclosure

The Times on that thing Literary Alliance Scotland had on its website for weeks but now says is “inappropriate” and they don’t know how it got there:

A briefing document on providing safety for trans people published by the Literary Alliance Scotland (LAS) said that “Terfs” — trans-exclusionary radical feminists, a derogatory term for women considered hostile to trans people — were joining forces with “fascists”.

It said this was a “societal issue” and urged bookshop owners not to “stay out of it”. It added: “This rise in transphobia signals a danger to all LGBTQ+ people, to reproductive rights, etc.”

Good old “etc” yeah? That can mean anything you like. Very professional, very literary.

The alliance, formed in 2015, is

Magi Gibson on Literary Alliance of Scotland and the blacklisting of feminist women:

Let’s start with this piece, which seems not so much guidance or advice, but an uncompromising imperative. (Screenshot from the guidance document)

This is extremely worrying. How can an organisation purportedly committed to inclusion and diversity endorse a call which not only uses a derogatory term about women, and is essentially a call to blacklist certain books from bookshops, and to no-platform certain authors?

By imitating all the other organizations and institutions that do so.

The truth is that this guidance sanctions the blacklisting of books of any woman who has written or expressed a view on the reality of biological sex.

This is not a

We just want to square the circle, that’s all.

“I have always regarded @jk_rowling as a national institution, a national treasure.”

As he repeatedly refuses to explain Labour’s policy on self identification, @AnasSarwar says the UK should “learn the lessons” from Scotland.@CathyNewman | https://t.co/7OSDQjxruW pic.twitter.com/xxnvGaT1Y1

— Times Radio (@TimesRadio) May 24, 2024

I want to see it easier and more humane for how trans people can access a gender recognition certificate, but I also want to make sure we’re protecting single sex spaces based on biological sex

Well you CAN’T, because those two items cancel each other. The whole nonsensical idea of a “gender recognition certificate” renders women’s rights an absurdity. If men can get “certificates” that say they … Read the rest

Oh really?

We will be investigating the process in which our online materials are uploaded and will revise our procedures. We apologise for any confusion or offence this has caused.

— Literature Alliance Scotland (@LitScotland) May 24, 2024

Unsuitable, eh? I wonder in what sense. https://twitter.com/coccinellanovem/status/1794043698692444386 Golly gee, how did that get there. It’s all so very puzzling. … Read the rest

A rape crisis centre that gleefully taunts women:

@RCGaberdeen this morning.

Effectively telling women to "fuck off". pic.twitter.com/UG8tfEqCEg

— Dr P (@Psychgirl211) May 24, 2024

Rape Crisis Grampian is their name. They mock women.

Women are not safe with @RCGaberdeen

They have no female only spaces pic.twitter.com/4Fr1Petjyp

— Le_Sorelle_Arduino KPSS (@Sorelle_Arduino) May 24, 2024

Ha. ha. ha. Geddit? They offer women only spaces that include men two days a week and the rest of the week they offer spaces that include men. Take that, cis bitches! … Read the rest

From Woman’s Place UK a couple of years ago:

For the International Women’s Day episode of BBC Woman’s Hour, Emma Barnett interviewed Anneliese Dodds, the Shadow Minister for Women and Equalities, and asked her for a clear definition of ‘what a woman is’.

And didn’t get one. Of course.

Anneliese Dodds: Well, I have to say that there are different definitions legally around what a woman actually is. I mean, you look at the definition within the Equality Act, and I think it just says someone who is adult and female, I think, but then doesn’t see how you define either of those things. I mean, obviously, that’s then you’ve got the biological definition, legal definition…

Emma

The BBC solemnly informs us that a teenager is going to “become a saint.”

Carlo Acutis died in 2006, at the age of 15, meaning he would be the first millennial – a person born in the early 1980s to late 1990s – to be canonised. It follows Pope Francis attributing a second miracle to him. It involved the healing of [a] university student in Florence who had bleeding on the brain after suffering head trauma.

So why did Carlo Acutis die? If he can heal a university student in Florence why can’t he cure himself?

Carlo Acutis had been beatified – the first step towards sainthood – in 2020, after he was attributed with his first miracle – healing

Yeah. Same.

We live in an age when some of our most brilliant minds have to waste their time explaining to people things like “why males don’t belong in women’s prisons” and “why males don’t belong in women’s sports.” My patience for all of this is rapidly waning. pic.twitter.com/0vWos2vGiD

— Ben Appel (@benappel) May 22, 2024

… Read the rest

The ACLU three weeks ago:

Anti-abortion politicians brought this case all the way up to the Supreme Court to deny pregnant people access to emergency abortion care that is necessary to prevent severe and potentially life-altering health consequences, and even death.

The Supreme Court recently heard oral arguments in Idaho v. United States and Moyle v. United States, which will determine whether politicians can put doctors in jail for treating pregnant patients experiencing medical emergencies. The ultimate decision in the case — which is expected by the summer — could have severe consequences on the health and lives of people across the country facing emergency pregnancy complications.

Etc etc etc. The ACLU doesn’t say “women” or “woman” even … Read the rest

Perfect. The Supreme Court says yay racial gerrymandering; let the fun begin.

The Supreme Court handed down a 6-3 decision along party lines on Thursday, which represented its fullest endorsement of partisan gerrymandering to date. 

In the past, legal restrictions on racial gerrymandering — maps drawn to minimize the voting power of a particular racial group, rather than the power of a political party — had the side effect of also limiting attempts to draw maps that benefitted one party or another. While the Court largely tolerated gerrymanders that were designed to lock one party into power, those maps sometimes failed because they also targeted racial minorities.

Justice Samuel Alito’s opinion in Alexander v. South Carolina State Conference

Keir Starmer is still pretending Rosie Duffield doesn’t exist.

Rosie Duffield was snubbed from Sir Keir Starmer’s election launch event in Kent on Thursday – even though she is the only elected Labour MP in the county. The MP for Canterbury – who has angered many in her party for her stance on women’s rights – only found out about the event on social media. No Labour leader had visited Kent for years after Ms Duffield was elected in a shock 2017 victory.

He’s so determined to exclude her that he ignores the opportunity to big up his own launch event for the sake of blacklisting her.

The Labour leader was joined by Angela Rayner, his deputy, Naushabah

Oh come ON.

We apologise for an error in our original submission to the OfS free speech consultation, which incorrectly listed "gender critical" speech as an example of unlawful speech, in place of "transphobic". This was a genuine mistake and we have now republished our corrected summary.

— Russell Group (@RussellGroup) May 23, 2024

An error???

Meaning what, their foot slipped and they typed “gender critical” instead of “transphobic”?

Come on. It wasn’t a fumble or a blunder or a pratfall or a “genuine mistake.” It was an iteration of the trans dogma that the two are the same thing, and equally evil and deserving of punishment and exile. It was yet another instance of the hatred of women … Read the rest

Unbelievable.

Bad enough yet?

He’s still hasn’t been fired.… Read the rest

It’s all just a game to some of them.

As Democrats lauded the White House’s 200th judicial confirmation, though, a partisan firestorm raged in the Senate Judiciary Committee, where Republicans ground proceedings to a halt during a confirmation hearing for the latest slate of court nominees.

Among the appointees who faced questioning Wednesday morning was Sarah Netburn, tapped by the Biden administration to join the bench on the Southern District of New York.

GOP lawmakers on the committee dialed in on a 2022 case she presided over as a magistrate judge in the same district, in which she granted the request of an incarcerated transgender woman who asked to move to a women’s prison from a men’s prison. The

Oops. Turns out it wasn’t the neighbors after all.

NEW: Last summer, the Alito beach home in New Jersey flew the “Appeal to Heaven” flag, which like the upside down US flag, is linked to Jan. 6. We have photos from July, August and September as well as eyewitnesses. https://t.co/uOjZcaUvk9 pic.twitter.com/yUCqbvdT2A

— Jodi Kantor (@jodikantor) May 22, 2024

So this is a huge deal. The Appeal to Heaven flag was all over the insurrection and comes out of explicitly Christian Nationalist spaces. Sam Alito is professing his Christian Nationalism. https://t.co/d7WMyyjEeg

— Andrew L. Seidel (@AndrewLSeidel) May 22, 2024

Either Alito’s wife gets into a lot of arguments with her neighbors or there’s a pattern here pic.twitter.com/fYCbi0uQRL

— Jennifer Senior (@JenSeniorNY)

If you’re going to write a book about the Church and its hatred of women, don’t accept a glammed-up tits-out cover. Like this one:

It was centuries of atrocities against women, primarily. She got that right. But this romanticized scene doesn't capture the full horror of it. The women were often stripped, or wearing a filthy shift, their heads shaved and chained to the stake, as in this 1587 Swiss drawing.… pic.twitter.com/Pc8WjsMUwr

— Max Dashu (@MaxDashu) May 22, 2024

Yeah they weren’t standing their in ball gowns that highlighted their breasts and with flowing hair tossed by the breeze. It wasn’t a sexy festive occasion.

This is how you do it:

Cover by Elisabeth Ohlson Wallin… Read the rest

More Wings Over Scotland on Adam Ramsay:

Since 2019 Ramsay has been the editor of Open Democracy, an activist “news” site funded – to the tune of millions of pounds a year – chiefly by large grants from American and other corporate and industrial charities like the Ford Foundation, created by the notorious racist and anti-Semitic car magnate Henry Ford.

…

These grants are provided, naturally, mostly in the name of “social justice”, “diversity” and “inclusion”. Many of the donors, like the Wellspring Philanthropic Fund which provided OD with $800,000 in grants in recent years, are deeply opaque, with their website declining to identify even which country the fund is based in and having been