Hmmmmm. It says “NHS inform” at the top. It shows other available languages. Surely the goal here is to inform patients. And yet…

The goal is surely to inform, and yet the NHS tells people, including people who don’t read English, that there are people who are not women or girls yet who “bleed from their vagina.” Well, what people? What people are those exactly? What people who are not women or girls have the ability to “bleed from their vagina”? Why don’t we all know about them? Why haven’t we all always known about them?

The NHS, let’s remember, is not the Guardian or the BBC, nor is it an activist on social media. The NHS is a health service. An important part of its work is providing information that is as clear and unambiguous and easy to understand as it can possibly be, and also as accurate. Accuracy is key. You don’t want to go mixing up milligrams and micrograms, and you don’t want to go mixing up women and men. You need to know exactly what the patient weighs before you prescribe meds, and you need to know exactly what sex the patient is before a whole lot of things. That’s the job, and it’s crucial. Pretending boys and men can menstruate is the opposite.

Here NI is “a place for lesbian and bisexual women” in Belfast. Its most recent Facebook post, six hours ago:

One, it carefully omits “sex” from the “regardless of” bit. Two, the image is of a woman brandishing her fist at a cringing shaking man while shouting at him.

To repeat: it calls itself “a place for lesbian and bisexual women.”

Pretend-woman Robin Moira White in the Independent:

Today continues the Supreme Court hearing of the For Women Scotland v The Scottish Ministers appeal. Ostensibly, this case concerns guidance issued by the Scottish government about who can be considered for places on boards of public bodies in Scotland. In fact, it comes down to a dispute about the meaning of the word “sex” in the UK Equality Act 2010, the definition of “woman” and “man” under that act – and the place of trans people in our society.

As if you can change the realities of who is a woman and who is a man by passing an act. As if we don’t already know who is a woman and who is a man. As if it made any sense to change the definitions of “woman” and “man.”

For Women Scotland, supported by intervening “gender-critical” or anti-trans organisations, argues that “sex” can only mean “biological” sex, defined by someone’s chromosomes from conception. The Scottish government, supported by interventions from the UK Equalities and Human Rights Commission and the international human rights organisation Amnesty says no, “sex” in the Equality Act includes transgender people who have been through the gender recognition process…

Blah blah blah. It’s all so ridiculous. You might as well redefine “death” – let’s change it to mean “a delicious meal.” Cheerful, but temporary. Death remains death, and changing the meaning of the word doesn’t and can’t change the reality. It’s much the same with life, and birth, and conception, and sex, and woman and man. Name them all Flopsy if you want but the realities remain.

Those who support For Women Scotland say that a finding which upholds the Scottish rulings would be disastrous for women’s rights. Their position appears to rest on exaggeration and hyperbole. Writing in the Daily Mail, Julie Bindel said this outcome would lead to the “destruction” of women’s rights. Given that the rulings have been in place since 2022 and women’s rights appear not to have been destroyed in the past couple of years, this seems polemic at best.

He says smugly, ignoring all the ways women’s rights have been battered and contested and diminished in the past couple of years. This conceited jerk blathering away in the Indy under the pretense of being a woman is one dent in women’s rights.

From the New Republic:

Sargent: Indeed. I want to ask you about this idea of self-censorship under that pressure. You have some experience and insight with what happens inside The New York Times. You were public editor. How do you think editors and newsroom leaders experience criticism like this from Trump? Do they see it as something to worry about? Do they get anxious about being perceived as being biased against Trump? How does this sort of stuff register internally there?

Sullivan: There’s a real push and pull about it. Reporters want to do good stories. They’re not going after Trump, or it’s not really about their personal politics or whether the Times leans left or right. They want to do a good story. They want to do stories that get attention, that could win a prize, that tell us something that we didn’t know. That’s what motivates reporters and their immediate editors.

As you go higher up the food chain, there is a concern that big news organizations not be perceived as too liberal or liberal at all. They want to be seen as neutral. The question is, and this came up a lot during the campaign and it just comes up all the time, can you really be neutral when you’re dealing with Donald Trump? 

That.

That’s the thing about Trump: it’s not even about left v right or Democrats v Republicans. Or it is about that but before you even get to that, it’s about Trump himself, Trump the person, Trump the human monstrosity. It’s about handing power to a human with no trace of conscience or empathy or generosity or any such other-directed feeling and morality. We haven’t seen that before. We’ve seen people in power with not enough such feeling, or with such feeling aimed in the wrong direction, but not people with none of it at all.

So, in that sense, it’s grotesque to demand “neutrality” about him. It’s a moral outrage to be neutral about a person like that.

Oliver Brown points out that women are entitled to think we’re being trolled.

The failure of Barbra Banda to meet sex eligibility rules is not in question: indeed, Andrew Kamanga, president of the Zambian football association, confirmed in 2022 the striker had not met the “gender verification criteria” and so could not compete in the Women’s Africa Cup of Nations. He gave this statement to the BBC. And so it is doubly extraordinary to discover that in 2024, Banda has just been anointed BBC Women’s Footballer of the Year.

The Confederation of African Football is one of the few major sporting bodies in recent years to have mandated sex testing. Fifa and the International Olympic Committee, by contrast, adopt the fundamentally wrong-headed stance that you are whatever your legal documents say you are. So does the NWSL. Its policy states: “People designated female at birth, regardless of their gender identity or gender expression, are eligible to compete.” That is why Banda has been able to tear it up in the United States for Orlando, and at the World Cup for Zambia, and at two successive Olympic Games – and yet been deemed ineligible for Africa’s major continental showpiece. One organisation takes biological sex seriously, while the rest apparently could not care less.

That’s because the rest are more spiritual. What sex you are is in the mind, not the body.

With Banda, as with Khelif and Semenya, there is a stubborn refusal by the apologists to engage with the crux of the matter: namely, that if you are female, as you say you are, take a test. That is the one measure that would put all the uncertainty to rest. Without it, the wagon-circling around Banda is pure posturing. “Barbra Banda is a woman”: that was the opening line of an article about the case in 2022. The evidence? That Banda was registered and raised as one.

You can raise a dog as a giraffe, if you like, but that dog won’t be a giraffe. “Raised as” is just hand-waving, the way talk of the soul is just hand-waving.

This is why sex testing is so fundamental to protect fair sport for women. This is why so many female athletes are in favour of the return of quick, non-invasive swabs to remove the ambiguity. The intellectual substance in acclaiming Banda’s womanhood is rooted in nothing more than one person’s self-declared identity. But we cannot know that Banda is definitively a woman – for the simple reason that the player has been kept away from the one test that would prove it.

Whatever it takes to cheat women.

Originally a comment by maddog on You’ve never been.

… because you’ve never been denied any area of expression, there’s a lot women take for granted. You’re not punished every time you act in a way that is feminine. You don’t know what it’s like to be forced into a lot of toxic male social dynamics that feel terrifying. You don’t know what it’s like to feel your brain malfunctioning on testosterone.

What a liar.

Women “have never been denied any area of expression”? In what world? Women have for centuries been, and continue to be, denied almost every form of expression until relatively recently, and then only partially permitted, and only in modern Western democratic countries. Women in Afghanistan aren’t even permitted to speak in public, and not even in their own homes if someone outside could imaginably hear their voices. Women take what for granted, now? On account of “never [having] been denied any area of expression?

Women are “not punished every time you act in a way that is feminine”? Are you kidding me? The stereotypes of femininity imposed on women because of their sex are the punishment for having the audacity to be born female. That’s precisely why many women rebel against “act[ing] in a way that is feminine.”. Of course, women are also punished for not acting in a way that is feminine. The stereotypes of femininity are designed to oppress and to punish women. Submissiveness, subordination, relegation to unpaid domestic labor, and the like are promoted as proper standards of femininity because these qualities keep women powerless. Women’s fashions are created — largely by men — to keep women vulnerable. Women’s shoes? Modern footbinding. A woman couldn’t run in those shoes to save her life. Skirts for women but not men? Gives men much easier access to women’s private areas for humiliation or rape. Tight skirts, like pencil skirts, aren’t as easy for men to penetrate, but they restrict women’s natural stride. Again, women couldn’t run to save their lives if they had to. Women’s clothes deliberately designed without pockets? Burdens women with an auxiliary appendage (purse) subject to easy loss or theft, rather than allowing women to keep their valuables on their person and hands-free, unlike men. Women being forced to “act in a way that is feminine” is the punishment. Don’t tell me that women don’t know this and don’t feel this.

Women “don’t know what it’s like to be forced into a lot of toxic male social dynamics that feel terrifying”? As if women don’t see those social dynamics up close and personal? As if women don’t suffer the consequences of ” toxic male social dynamics”? As if the “toxicity” of male social dynamics isn’t comprised of misogyny? As if women aren’t terrified of and terrorized by “toxic male social dynamics”?

There may be a point that women “don’t know what it’s like to feel your brain malfunctioning on testosterone,” but that’s pretty rich coming from a man. Women are commonly accused of being crazy, or “having their brains malfunction” from estrogen. That’s why women are called ” hysterical”; this supposed illness is used as a bludgeon against women to dismiss what women say, to ignore what women feel, to overlook women’s concerns, to keep women oppressed. Now you want to claim ” testosterone brain poisoning” as an excuse for male behaviors, as a reason not to hold men accountable for their testosterone-influenced actions. “Crazy hormones” is deployed against women, but proffered as a mitigating factor in favor of men. Classic double standard, that.

TL;DR: You lie. There’s a lot you “take for granted” that you don’t know about what women really experience.

So people voted for Trump thinking he would make housing cheaper?

Do they know what he’s been doing for the past half-century? His day job, if you like? His one skill?

Is Trump serious about massive tariff hikes that could increase prices for US consumers as soon as he begins a second presidency, which was won partly because voters were so frustrated with inflation and costs of housing and groceries?

And they thought Trump would lower the costs of housing? Really?

Just curious.

In honor of Yay Blasphemy hour here’s this week’s Jesus and Mo.

How about no.

Labour MP Tahir Ali has today advocated for blasphemy laws during Prime Minister’s Questions.

The MP for Birmingham Hall Green and Moseley asked Keir Starmer if he would “commit to introducing measures to prohibit the desecration of all religious texts and the prophets of the Abrahamic religions”. Speaking in the Commons, Ali added that “November marks Islamophobia awareness month,” and that “last year the United Nations Human Rights Council adopted a resolution condemning the desecration of religious texts, including the Quran, despite opposition from the previous government.”

Then the UN Human Rights Council needs to have a word with itself. Goddy rights are the enemy of human rights. “Prophets” are the fictional goon squad that enforces bad retrograde misogynist religious laws and we have every right to say what we think of them. MP Tahir Ali has no right at all to impose his religion on anyone else (including his own children), any more than trans ideologues have a right to impose trans ideology on anyone.

The Prime Minister replied that the Government is “committed to tackling all forms of hatred and division”, including Islamophobia and antisemitism.

Oh did he now. Listen up, Mr Starmer: we get to dislike Islam as well as Christianity and Judaism. We get to dislike the “Abrahamic” religions. We get to say what we dislike about them. They’re all forms of illegitimate power, and it’s not a secular official’s job to put up a fence around them.

Ali said that “mindless desecration only serves to fuel division and hatred,” with the Prime Minister adding: “desecration is awful.” 

Oh shut up. Theocracy is awful. The imaginary Eternal Prime Minister we can never vote out, never dissent from, never correct, never tell to fuck all the way off, is not something secular heads of secular governments should be shielding from the people.

Trans-identifying man Brianna Wu tells women we’ve never been denied anything so we just don’t get it.

Yes he actually wrote that. Women have never been denied any area of expression, he says, blithely ignoring all the many many areas of expression we have been denied, and in some cases punished for trying to enter. Man lectures women on how we have never been told “No” so we just don’t understand.

…you’ve never been denied any area of expression, there’s a lot women take for granted. You’re not punished every time you act in a way that is feminine. You don’t know what it’s like to be forced into a lot of toxic male social dynamics that feel terrifying. You don’t know what it’s like to feel your brain malfunctioning on testosterone.

Now let’s talk about all the things you don’t know what it’s like, Mister Wu.

Jack Smith left the door open just a fraction.

In fact, this move could be an effort to keep the cases alive in the long term. An interesting tell in each motion is Smith’s request to dismiss the cases “without prejudice.” That means that the cases can be filed again. By dismissing the cases now on his own terms, Smith blocks Trump’s attorney general from dismissing the cases for all time.

Which of course Trump’s attorney general would be required to do.

In addition, by filing his motions pre-emptively, Smith was able to explain his reasons for dismissing the case, rather than allowing Trump’s future AG to mischaracterize them. According to Smith, he was dismissing the case not because of the merits or strength of the cases, but because he had to. As Smith explains, the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel, whose opinions are “binding” on the special counsel, has concluded that a sitting president may not be indicted or criminally prosecuted under the Constitution…

But Smith was careful to note that this relief from criminal prosecution is “temporary,” and ends when the president leaves office. Smith cites OLC as concluding that this form of immunity for a sitting president “would generally result in the delay, but not the forbearance, of any criminal trial” That is, Trump gets a reprieve, but only during his term in office.

But the statute of limitations would be in effect by January 2029. But there’s a fix for that.

Smith’s brief contains another tell when he writes that OLC has “noted the possibility that a court might equitably toll the statute of limitations to permit proceeding against the President once out of office.” That is, a court could call a timeout, pausing it on Trump’s inauguration day on Jan. 21, 2025, and then restarting the clock when Trump leaves office in 2029. That would give prosecutors plenty of time to refile charges. Certainly, the tolling issue would be litigated, but by dismissing the case now, Smith preserves this issue for future prosecutors to argue.

It won’t happen, but it’s a nice thought.

As OLC has written, the bar on prosecuting a president is not forever — a president “is ultimately accountable for his misconduct that occurs before, during, and after his service to the country.” As Smith writes, “the president lacks the prerogatives of a king and his protection from prosecution.”

Officially, maybe, but unofficially, he has one hell of a lot of prerogatives he shouldn’t have.

Does Amnesty Hate Women?

Well duh. Of course it does. Obviously.

It’s not a human rights issue to pretend to be something you’re not and force everyone else to play along with your pretense.

It’s glaringly obviously not a human right to force women to agree that men are women if they say so, welcome men into all our spaces, give them all our prizes, put them in charge of all our organizations, make them CEO of all our rape crisis services.

Amnesty is garbage.

I was thinking Jack Smith shut down the Trump case because he had to, but Adam Schiff implies he didn’t.

“I think this is a serious mistake by the department,” Schiff told MSNBC’s Jen Psaki, saying that while Smith sought to dismiss the cases without prejudice — meaning they can be brought against Trump once his term is over — it now means that the “status quo” is to not bring any charges against the president.

If it’s a mistake, that implies it wasn’t mandatory.

“But it is nevertheless a very serious distinction, because the status quo now is no charges against the president,” Schiff, who served on the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, continued. “You would have to upset that status quo to later bring charges again, as opposed to merely postponing the proceedings, in which case the presumption is they continue when he leaves office.”

…

Schiff added that the “mistake” by Smith’s team to pull the plug on the cases is compounded by a host of other concerns.

“It compounds the mistake that you alluded to, which is they waited a year before they even brought this case forward or began the investigation,” the California Democrat told Psaki, President Biden’s former press secretary. “And then you have the Supreme Court with this immunity decision.”

“And now you have a potential nominee in Pam Bondi, who is saying she’s going to prosecute the prosecutors,” he continued, adding that “all of that goes against what Jack Smith said in his brief motion, which is that no one’s above the law. So, we’re hearing that phrase a lot, but we’re not giving validity to it by these actions.”

Well quite.

Can ya fix it?

Why Bad Kennedy should not be the boss of Health and Human Services, by former Harvard Medical School dean Jeffrey S. Flier.

RFK Jr. was nominated precisely because of his stated positions on a wide range of health and scientific matters: vaccines, AIDS, the reputed harms of electromagnetic radiation from Wi-Fi and cell phones, and many other topics. So these views are central to assessing his suitability for the role. 

The scientific process requires skepticism about prevailing consensus. Some Kennedy supporters see his skepticism on a wide variety of scientific and medical issues, including policies during the Covid epidemic, as a positive that will enable him to disrupt the medical and research establishment.

But there’s informed skepticism and there’s crank skepticism. Bad Ken is crank rather than informed.

Our task is to evaluate his qualifications as a potential leader of HHS. I argue that by repeatedly making claims about important issues that are known to be false or that are devoid of evidence, RFK Jr. has disqualified himself from this position. 

Well, yes. That seems like a pretty good rule.

For decades, RFK Jr. has been a vocal advocate of the anti-vaccine movement. He was founder and chair of Children’s Health Defense, an organization that campaigns against childhood vaccinations whose beneficial effects on children’s health are firmly established. 

Most remarkable among his repeated claims is that childhood vaccination against measles, mumps, and rubella has caused the increase in autism. Just last year he said on Fox News: “I do believe that autism does come from vaccines.” This is long after the 1998 paper that advanced the idea was retracted as fraudulent in 2010. The author of the paper has been stripped of his medical license. Kennedy’s willful ignorance of this evidence should disqualify him from leadership in the health and research ecosystem. He has promoted a fear of vaccines that has—and will—lead to the return of diseases like measles and polio.

Aka diseases that can kill.

RFK Jr. repeatedly challenged the now well-established fact that AIDS is caused by the HIV virus, a discovery that led to a Nobel Prize and highly effective treatments that save millions of lives. 

In his 2021 book, The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health, Kennedy repeated his concerns about this discovery, saying he takes “no position” on whether HIV causes AIDS. Then, in a 2023 interview with New York magazine, he said that research into the causal connection between HIV and AIDS was “phony” and “crooked.” This is scientific ignorance, not the healthy skepticism that some supporters allege. No one who asserts such nonsense should be at the helm of Health and Human Services. 

Which is why Trum appointed him.

Dang. The BBC wins another prize for maximum hatred of women.

It’s the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.

UN Women (which doesn’t always know which people are women) tells us:

Violence against women and girls remains one of the most prevalent and pervasive human rights violations in the world. Globally, almost one in three women have been subjected to physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence, non-partner sexual violence, or both, at least once in their life.

For at least 51,100 women in 2023, the cycle of gender-based violence ended with one final and brutal act—their murder by partners and family members. That means a woman was killed every 10 minutes.

So are we talking about women here? Or about women plus men who pretend to be women? It does make a difference, because men kill women more than women kill men.

I think maybe I haven’t been paying enough attention to Brianna Wu, a 6’4″ man who calls himself a woman and wants to make himself safe by putting women in danger. Like…

See what he does there? Apparently without even noticing? Claims he would speedily be raped and/or assaulted if he used the men’s restroom, in order to defend his right to threaten women with rape and/or assault by barging into their restroom. He doesn’t want to be around men so he forces women to be around him. Men get to trample over women to make themselves safe from men, but women don’t get to do anything to be safe from men.

Did I mention that Wu is 6’4″?

This is so sick.

Jack Smith files to drop Jan. 6 charges against Donald Trump

Not because he didn’t do it, not because there’s no evidence he did it, but because there’s a law that says he can’t be prosecuted.

Special counsel Jack Smith has filed a motion to drop all four felony charges against President-elect Donald Trump in connection with his effort to overturn his 2020 presidential election in the lead-up to the deadly Jan. 6 attack on the U.S Capitol.

Trump was first indicted on four felonies in August 2023: conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding and conspiracy against rights. The case was then put on hold for months as Trump’s team argued that Trump could not be prosecuted.

…

“The Government’s position on the merits of the defendant’s prosecution has not changed. But the circumstances have,” Smith’s office wrote in Monday’s filing, adding that it is seeking to dismiss the charges ahead of Trump’s inauguration, in line with the Justice Department’s longstanding position that it can’t charge a sitting president.

“That prohibition is categorical and does not turn on the gravity of the crimes charged, the strength of the Government’s proof, or the merits of the prosecution, which the Government stands fully behind,” the special counsel added.

So he’s an absolute monarch. What a brilliant system we’ve set up here.

I can hear the shrieks of laughter all the way over on the left coast.

So declaring a particular month “Pride” month is now mandatory, and refusal is a human rights violation? Really?

The Ontario Human Rights Tribunal has found the township of Emo will have to pay damages after refusing to proclaim Pride Month back in 2020.

I do love it that the township is Emo. No YOU are.

Borderland Pride requested Emo to declare June as Pride Month and display a rainbow flag for one week but the township refused, resulting in a years-long process in which the tribunal ruled against the township. The tribunal ruled Borderland Pride will be awarded $15,000, with $10,000 coming from the township itself and the other $5,000 coming from Emo mayor Harold McQuaker.

Another apt name. Could they find anyone named McHedonist to balance things out?

But anyway. I’m not seeing it. Emo should support and defend LGB rights by all means, but should it be required by the government to declare a “Pride Month” for one small segment of the population? There’s no “Pride Month” for women you know. Should governments be requiring Pride Month for Catholics, Mormon, Baptists? Buddhists, Quakers, Jehovah’s Witnesses? You can see where this is going: there aren’t enough months. More broadly, it’s just not obvious or clear that naming months after something to promote it or defend it or celebrate it should be mandatory for reasons to do with human rights. It’s not clear at all, in fact it’s quite foggy.

Doug Judson is a lawyer in Fort Frances and one of the directors on the board of Borderland Pride, and said they’re elated to have finally brought it to a close and is a significant victory for the organization.

“We didn’t pursue this because of the money. We pursued this because we were treated in a discriminatory fashion by a municipal government, and municipalities have obligations under the Ontario Human Rights Code not to discriminate in the provision of a service,” said Judson.

But discriminatory how? Does Emo have a Straight Month? If it does then I might agree with Judson, but I’m pretty confident it doesn’t, on account of how 1. that’s not a thing and 2. it would be asking for trouble. Assuming there is no Straight Month, how exactly is it discriminatory to turn down the opportunity to have a Pride one? It may be churlish, but discriminatory? I call that language-creep.

“The tribunal’s decision affirms that. That is the important thing we were seeking here was validation that as 2SLGBTQA plus people, we’re entitled to treatment without discrimination when we try to seek services from our local government.”

But naming a month isn’t a service. It isn’t among the services local governments provide. It’s also not discrimination not to provide it; see above. Naming a month is something else – a display of solidarity or a display of virtue or a bit of both.

Judson said one of the messages it sends to other townships and municipalities is that Pride needs to be in the smallest and most remote communities just as it is in larger cities, and in some of the places “where it can be really hard to help people understand why it’s so important”

“I hope that it emboldens and strengthens people in communities like Emo and other places like that across Ontario to know that they have entitlements from their government,” said Judson.

But this is all symbols. It’s just wrapping paper. It’s a display of CorrectThink. It’s advertising, it’s public relations. There’s a place for that kind of thing, certainly, but that doesn’t make it an “entitlement from their government.” Pride months and weeks and days and years are very old news at this point, and kind of stale. We have more urgent things to quarrel over.