From the tribunal:

[NC is Naomi Cunningham, KT is Katie Horsburgh, 23-year-old board member of ERCC]

NC: Discussion here of having NB ppl in women-only organisation.
KT: There are no men at ERCC. Open to all genders
NC: Am talking about staff
KT: I think website says we create women-only place.
NC: Says no men
KT: Correct 

Still playing stupid games. “There are no men at ERCC; ERCC is open to all genders.”

NC: You are aware some ppl think being man or woman is matter of biology. Can’t change. Some ppl think yes
KT: Yes they do
NC: So you are being unclear when you say “no men”.
KT: Disagree. T-I policy is on website. And we have a meeting to match ppl to support worker. 

Stupid stupid stupid games.

NC: Are you saying that saying “no men” plus publishing TI policy, that means all SUs will be clear that there might be TW employed?
KT: We don’t employ any men –
NC: Not asking that. Asking if clear to all SUs
KT: In combination – policies, initial meeting – yes, clear. 

In other words we play stupid games but we say so on the website and in the initial meeting so that’s fine then.

NC: Can you imagine an SU [service user] may be without your educational privileges, who might *not* understand that?
KT: We have diverse highly trained team, match the service standards, to put with right support worker 

“Do you realize some people might not understand your stupid games?” “Oh we have a highly trained team to explain our stupid games to the peasantry.”

The smug malice of all this just makes my skin crawl.

Scotland embraces its own:

An arts company based in Edinburgh is launching a new show about JK Rowling and her part in the transgender debate called TERF CUNT.

Civil Disobedience, which has its roots in the Edinburgh Fringe and was launched by Barry and Josef Church-Woods in May 2016, described it as a “vital think-piece on Joanne, exploring just what could motivate a person with such privilege to take such a divisive stance on issues that affect her fans”.

Ah yes, two men do civil disobedience by calling a woman a cunt as publicly and showily as they can. And while they’re at it they patronizingly call her “Joanne” as if she were four years old and they were her nanny. And they whine about her “privilege” when it arises entirely from the fact that she writes exceedingly popular books. And they call it “divisive” to defend women’s rights while they don’t call it “divisive” to trample all over women’s rights. A pair of privileged male idiots and no mistake.

It has been written by Joshua Kaplan, a “queer screenwriter and playwright”, and will be performed at The Actors Studio in New York City on Thursday, February 8. The plot involves Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson staging an “intervention” with Rowling.

Oh get a grip. Three talentless movie actors who owe their fame entirely to Rowling. They’re not seers, they’re not thinkers, they’re not very bright. Why not get Donald Duck and Goofy and Bugs Bunny to stage an intervention with “Lia” Thomas instead?

The synopsis for the show continues: “Joanne led a blessed life – for a woman. Billionaire. Literary phenomenon. Natural ginger. And most importantly, beloved. Completely beloved. Until she blew it all to hell.”

Stupid little piggies. They carefully leave out the pre-Potter part of her “blessed life” – the part where she was a single mother who’d escaped a violent husband.

I hope the first performance on February 8 is also the last.

What could go wrong?

Ram Mandir Day: With the upcoming Pran Pratishtha ceremony at the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya scheduled for January 22, 2024, preparations are not only in full swing in India but are also making waves globally. In a notable gesture, the towns of Oakville and Brampton in Ontario, Canada, have officially declared January 22, 2024, as “Ayodhya Ram Mandir Day.”

The mayors of Oakville, Rob Burton, and Brampton, Patrick Brown, acknowledged the long-standing aspiration of the Hindu community and emphasised the cultural, religious, and historical significance of the Ayodhya Ram Mandir inauguration on this date. Describing it as a testament to values of peace, unity, and harmony, the local governments have chosen to commemorate January 22, 2024, as a special day in honour of this momentous occasion.

So they’ve simply never heard of the intercommunal riots that followed the demolition of the Babri Masjid? In which thousands of people were killed? Those values of peace unity and harmony?

After a wait of 500 years, the inauguration of the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya is set to take place on January 22, 2024. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will lead the Pran Pratishtha ceremony, marking the culmination of centuries-old dreams and aspirations.

Who wrote this bilge? Modi himself?

H/t Seanna Watson

Here’s an interesting bit from the tribunal. (It’s tricky reading the live tweets, because of course they have to be done at speed so a lot is left out and some is scrambled, but it’s worth the effort.)

KM is Katy McTernan, a member of Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre’s senior management.

“What problem?”

Really. Really. A man was “the best candidate” to head a rape crisis centre. REALLY???

That second “rape crisis centres” must be a mistake, and should be something like “trans activism” or campaigning or something along those lines. Anyway…”that’s not what was happening”? Oh really? Why else would a man apply for that job?

NC If its OK for a man to be appointed at CEO of rape crisis centre and the world accepts that's OK bc TWAW then no space left is there for a woman who wants to say I don't want to be measured for a bra by someone who looks like Eddie Izzard

— Tribunal Tweets (@tribunaltweets) January 23, 2024

Wadwha was appointed head of a rape crisis centre because he’s a woman, not because he’s a trans woman. But of course he’s not a woman, so that can’t be why. What KM means is that he was appointed to make the point that he “is a woman”…at the expense of all the women the rape crisis centre is there to help. He damn well was appointed because he’s a trans woman, because there is absolutely no other reason for him to have been appointed. It was and is a calculated deliberate “fuck you” to women for the sake of “trans inclusion.”

Thread by @tribunaltweets on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App

The Telegraph on the Jo Phoenix win:

The Open University “feared” being seen to support gender-critical beliefs when it failed to protect a professor from harassment, a judge ruled.

But the Open University apparently didn’t fear being seen to throw feminist women to the wolves.

Why is that?

Why is opprobrium from team luxury gender so much more terrifying than opprobrium from feminist women? Why do the small number of men who pretend to be women matter so vastly much more than half the population?

A ruling found that the Open University’s failure to protect her from harassment from colleagues and trans activists was motivated by “fear of being seen to support gender-critical beliefs” and “fear of the pro gender identity section” of the university.

So how do we get institutions to fear us even more than they fear trans activists? How do we get more scary? Halloween masks? Brandishing swords? What?

The tribunal heard that in June 2019 The Sunday Times published a letter signed by Prof Phoenix and other academics registering “disquiet over a perceived inappropriately close relationship between the LGBTQ+ charity Stonewall and UK universities”.

Her views were described as “problematic and scary” by senior lecturer Dr Deborah Drake, the hearing was told and another staff member demanded she be punished.

In October 2019 Prof Louise Westmarland reduced Prof Phoenix to tears when she raised her gender-critical views in a meeting.

“Prof Westmarland said to [Prof Phoenix] that ‘having you in the department was like having a racist uncle at the Christmas dinner table’,” the tribunal found.

I wonder if Louise Westmarland ever apologized. I wonder what she’s thinking now.

Trump tells us how very very very intelligent he is.

Guardian columnist Zoe Williams says what now?

THIS MUCH uncritical air time to gender critical feminists? THIS MUCH? WHAT “this much”? They’ve given a lot of uncritical air time to men who pretend to be women and very god damn little to women who say men can’t be women.

Also note that because Woman’s Hour talked about a gender critical feminist on one episode Williams thinks trans enthusiasts should get a Trans Hour for “balance.” One episode for Woman’s Hour, an entire daily hour-long program for Trans Hour. “Balance.”

What a contemptible antifeminist backstabbing creep.

There’s also the tribunal. “SU” is service user.

Updating to add: Background and initials at Adams vs Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre.

Why in HELL would a rape crisis center employ “nonbinary” people? Other than because a man who pretends to be a woman is the boss and he told them to?

Note the scrupulous rule about “not disclosing sex information about staff” coupled with the complete lack of scrupulous concern about the women they’re supposed to be helping. It’s sick.

A biological woman!

What a nightmare.

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 idenniny is irrelevant to sex. It’s like saying sex should be prioritized over lipstick. Lipstick isn’t the same kind of thing as sex! Sex is more than accessories.

Phoenix resigned from the OU in December 2021. The tribunal found that she was constructively unfairly dismissed because the university breached the implied terms of trust and confidence in her employment contract and the duty to provide her with a suitable working environment. Remedies will be determined at a later date.

Hurry up.

Wait.

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.

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 ago.

Gender-critical feminists believe sex is biological and cannot be changed…

No we don’t “believe” that; we know it. Everyone knows it, but a small set of people pretend not to, and try to force everyone else to pretend too.

On Monday, a tribunal began hearing a constructive dismissal claim from Roz Adams against Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre. Next month, Kenny McBride’s case against the Scottish government is due to be heard in Glasgow, while judgments are pending in a claim from Prof Jo Phoenix against the Open University and that of the Green party’s former deputy leader Shahrar Ali against the party.

In all four cases – and more in the pipeline – the claimants argue they were discriminated against because they hold gender-critical beliefs.

…

Lewis said there would always be “bad eggs” but compared the situation to legal cases on manifestations of religious belief at work, such as wearing a cross.

But we’re not the ones with the religious belief! We’re not the ones wearing a fucking cross. We’re the ones who refuse to lie about who is what sex.

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.

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 of subjugation by Muslim invaders and colonial powers.

In other words they’ve intensified the same old Hindu-Muslim rivalry that saw so many people massacred during Partition.

For decades, the temple site was bitterly contested by Hindus and minority Muslims, leading to nationwide riots in 1992 that killed 2,000 people, mainly Muslims, police say, after a Hindu mob destroyed a 16th-century mosque that had stood there.

So let’s have more of that, yeah?

India’s Hindus say the site is the birthplace of Lord Ram, and was holy to them long before Muslim Mughals razed a temple at the spot to build the Babri Masjid, or mosque, in 1528.

Nearly 5 centuries ago – but do let’s keep the quarrel going!

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 their own sexual gratification and teenage girls desperate enough to escape the strictures of femininity that they’re undergoing radical mastectomies and taking T? Which group is most likely to be driving the trans “movement” as a whole, and to whose benefit?

I wonder how much of the belligerence and bullying would disappear from the discussions around gender identity if you could remove the AGPs, and the trans “allies” who are only in it for the “righteous” misogyny? And if you could subtract those who would desist, the social contagion bandwagoneers, duped autistic kids, and trendy, spicy-straight “queers,” would that leave behind only a small(?) core of genuinely dysphoric people, for whom watchful waiting will not be enough? Likely a very small group, whose needs are poorly served by the current configuration of gender identitarianism? We’ll never know.

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? Or are they urged to?

Anyway, we get the gist. Gendered words are bad. If we stop using them Utopia will ensue.

Other demands include installing gender-neutral toilets and making both boys and girls wear the same uniforms.

Are they demands? Or are they requests, or are they ways to earn rewards? Plz clarify.

Stonewall’s website says ‘any educational institution catering for pupils aged 2-18’ can sign up to the School & College Champions programme, with membership costing £99 for the first year.

…

One secondary that won the award in 2021 said its activities included ‘writing a trans-inclusion policy, adapting the School Journey policy to be LGBTQ+ inclusive, and collating LGBTQ+ inclusive lessons from across the curriculum’.

Trans trans transy trans.

I guess Stonewall is just bored with dreary old lesbians and gay men. So last year. Before long they’ll be bored with transy trans, and move on to something else. Don’t mention giraffes, perhaps.

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?

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 liars? While news outlets carefully pretend he’s a man?

Diddums.

And then there’s Biden.

Rock, meet hard place.

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 deeply utterly consistently stupid. That makes him just like the rest of us! Never mind the “glamorous” wives, the solid gold 80 million square feet penthouse, the gorgeous ageless blond hair, the stubby fingers – it’s his slushpool of a brain that makes him the perfect guy to put in charge of the nukes. A president for the people!

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 of the evidence, everything, deleted and destroyed all of it.”

Haley, Pelosi, what’s the difference? They’re both female, they both talk, they both don’t suck Trump’s dick, so what the hell is the difference between them? Nothing of significance, obviously.

“It’s a distinction without a difference. It’s Nikki and Nancy,” Trump campaign senior adviser Chris LaCivita said to reporters Saturday night. “What’s the difference?”

See? What I’m saying. Their names both begin with N, too. How much more identical can you get?

At his rally Saturday night in Manchester, Trump said that he took a cognitive test and “aced it.”

Nah. He didn’t take a test, and if he had he wouldn’t have “aced” it. He’s a skilled criminal, that much is clear, but intelligent, no.

“I’ll let you know when I go bad. I really think I’ll be able to tell you,” he added. “I feel my mind is stronger now than it was 25 years ago. Is that possible?”

In his case?

The question answers itself.