Paula Scanlan on being shoved aside by Lia Thomas:

In a recent congressional hearing, I beseeched lawmakers to keep women’s physical safety in mind when considering policies that affect women-only spaces like locker rooms. The issue is close to my heart: I was a swimmer at the University of Pennsylvania alongside my transgender teammate Lia Thomas, whose participation on the women’s team raised serious questions about the eligibility of athletes who identify as a different sex to the one they were born as.

…

The politics of womanhood has become increasingly bizarre in the aftermath of the #MeToo revolution. In 2020, the otherwise left-leaning British author JK Rowling fired the tweet heard around the world when she mildly criticised the excesses of the transgender rights movement. Like me, Rowling is a victim of sexual violence, and felt that the admission of male bodies into women-only spaces could pose a risk.

See I don’t accept the implication of “otherwise left-leaning” that knowing men are not women is right-leaning. You can’t have any kind of women’s rights or liberation or equality or “inclusion” if you don’t know what women are, which includes knowing that they’re not men. More curtly, feminism is not right-leaning.

There is very little that’s genuinely leftish about trans ideology. Carving out weird exceptions for the more powerful class is not leftish. A sense of entitlement that could power Chicago is not leftish. Calling women misogynist names is not leftish. Misogyny itself is not leftish (although the left has all too often been infected with it).

While sports is the most high-profile example, there are many sex-segregated arenas that have, in recent years, exchanged their sex-based eligibility for one based on “gender identity.” Most Americans are likely unaware that, due to a quiet administrative change, the federal Violence Against Women law is now being misused to violate the privacy rights of women in the most vulnerable of situations: domestic violence shelters.

…

Given today’s shift, a man – perhaps a domestic abuser with no history of gender dysphoria – could potentially follow his female victim to a women-only shelter, and those tasked with safeguarding would be powerless to deny him entry to what once was a sacred safe space. After-all, he only need tell them that he identifies as a woman to gain entry.

A safe space at any rate. I don’t think there’s any need to call it sacred.

Talk about chutzpah…

Riley Gaines “sucks at swimming” because she can’t swim faster than a man twice her size.

Trans ideology=an amusement park for men who hate women.

BBC “reporting”:

Danielle McGahey: Transgender cricketer set to play in women’s T20 international for Canada

That is, male cricketer set to play in women’s T20 international for Canada.

Canada’s Danielle McGahey is set to become the first transgender cricketer to play in an official international match.

That is, Canada’s Danielle McGahey is set to become the first male cricketer to play in an official international women’s match.

The 29-year-old opening batter has fulfilled all of the eligibility criteria the International Cricket Council (ICC) has for male-to-female transgender players before the event in Los Angeles from 4-11 September.

Which doesn’t change the fact that he’s a man playing on a women’s team.

McGahey’s participation comes despite other sports – including athletics, cycling, swimming and both codes of rugby – banning transgender women from taking part in elite women’s competition.

That is, cricket is still letting men who claim to be women cheat, while other sports have stopped doing that.

A spokeswoman for the Women’s Rights Network (WRN) – a group which says it seeks to “defend the sex-based rights of women” – said transgender women had a “significant advantage” over athletes whose sex is recorded as female at birth, and called the ICC’s policy “unfair and unsafe”.

BBC carefully avoids admitting McGahey is a man while sneering that the WRN “says” it seeks to defend women’s rights. Skepticism for us, ValiDation for them.

McGahey emigrated from Australia to Canada in February 2020, socially transitioned to a woman in November 2020 and started medically transitioning in May 2021.

McGahey emigrated from Australia to Canada in February 2020, socially transitioned to a horse in November 2020, and started medically transitioning in May 2021.

McGahey told BBC Sport: “I am absolutely honoured. To be able to represent my community is something I never dreamed I would be able to do.”

Did he ever dream he would be able to intrude on women’s sport? I bet he did. I bet it was one of his favorite fantasies.

Man accused of homophobic comments towards Patrick Harvie arrested and charged

The alleged incident occurred while the Scottish Greens co-leader was launching his party’s candidate in the Rutherglen and Hamilton West by-election.

It has now been confirmed that a man has been arrested and charged after the incident in Rutherglen. The Glasgow MSP was taking part in a live TV interview when the incident took place. 

A Police Scotland spokesperson [said]: “Following a report of homophobic comments a 59-year-old man has been arrested and charged. A report will be sent to the Procurator Fiscal.”

I have to wonder if Police Scotland have ever arrested any man for gynophobic comments. I have to wonder if they even know there is such a thing.

How about suspending him over a really deep gorge?

Kidding, kidding.

That guy should be suspended from more things than cycling. Social media, for a start.

Fox News (sorry) on Rhys McKinnon/Veronica Ivy six weeks ago:

Veronica Ivy, a Canadian cyclist who became the first transgender woman to win a world track cycling championship, took issue with the sport’s governing body’s updated policy on transgender athletes’ participation in women’s events.

Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) released its new policy on Friday, prohibiting any trans cyclist from competing in women’s events if they “transitioned after (male) puberty.”

Ivy vented her frustrations on her Instagram account.

“However, now I’m forced into the humiliating ‘Men’s/Open’ category,” Ivy wrote. “No cis woman will be in this category, only trans women and CIS men. That means it’s not ‘open.’

“The UCI has said loud and clear that trans women are not real women and that we must be treated as other, and the cis women must be ‘protected’ from us innocent trans women.”

It must have been embarrassing that he had just quoted them as saying he is a woman.

Ivy called the UCI’s policy “nonsense.”

“It’s an indignity. It’s inhumane. It’s disgusting.

“I will not be deterred by this hateful targeted transphobic policy.”

Deterred from what? He will be deterred from forcing his way into women’s races if that’s what the official policy is. That’s a case where saying is definitive: rules. Just saying McKinnon/Ivy is a woman doesn’t make him a woman, but saying the new rule is that trans women can’t compete against women does make that the rule (if you’re the officials in charge saying it).

Note, of course, also, that he considers it “inhumane” to keep him out of women’s races but clearly not inhumane to allow him to compete in women’s races. Being humane=putting Rhys McKinnon first.

In May, the organization defended its policy after trans cyclist Austin Killips became the first transgender female to win a UCI stage race at the fifth stage of the Tour of the Gila. 

After considerable backlash, UCI then said it would review its policy, which ultimately led to Friday’s announcement. 

Keep lashing back. Inch by inch, row by row.

It’s amusing to find that I quoted “Veronica Ivy” aka Rhys McKinnon just six weeks ago saying:

Trans women are women. Trans women are female. Our sport’s governing body (cycling’s Union Cycliste Internationale, the one that banned Armstrong for life) says I’m female. My U.S. and Canadian identification documents say I’m female, including my birth certificate. My medical records all list me as female. So officials in sports, government and medicine all consider me, a trans woman, to be female. The people who disagree are just wrong.

How times change.

It’s such a bizarre thing for him to say, anyway, as Francis Boyle pointed out in the first comment. “All these people and institutions say I’m a woman therefore I am one.” As if he believed in literal word-magic, like the anointment of royalty. The UCI said he was female, so he was female. He’s never heard of lying? He’s never heard of error? But his academic field (when he had one) was philosophy.

Plus he knows we know that lots of people and institutions say it – we know they repeat the lie – we know it all too well. We know that, and it’s what we object to so intensely. We object to the magical thinking, we object to the insult to our intelligence as well as our rights, we object to the infantile idea that fantasy=reality. We object to being forced to play Let’s Pretend with a lot of hulking males who hate us. Rhys McKinnon is high up on that list.

But what is a woman? Dodds is one of those who are confused on the subject.

Canada warns its people against traveling to the US, where LGBTQMNROZDJFRT people are routinely genocided in the street.

Canada has issued a new travel warning to its LGBT citizens planning to visit the United States.

Anti-LGBT protests in the US rose 30-fold last year compared with 2017, while legal moves to restrict LGBT rights are on the rise.

That’s a lie though. The “legal moves” in question are mostly about people who claim to be the opposite sex, not about LGB people.

Global Affairs Canada warned that some state laws may affect them on their travels, but did not specify where.

Such warnings are usually reserved for countries such as Uganda, Russia or Egypt.

Which is the point. It’s meant to be insulting.

Mind you, the US has become all too much like Russia since 2017, but that’s because of Trump, it’s not because of some imaginary war on LGB people.

“Some states have enacted laws and policies that may affect 2SLGBTQI+ persons. Check relevant state and local laws,” reads its US travel advice page.

The term 2SLGBTQI+ is widely used in Canada for people who consider themselves two-spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning or intersex.

A spokesperson for Global Affairs Canada pointed to US laws targeting the transgender community. “Since the beginning of 2023, certain states in the US have passed laws banning drag shows and restricting the transgender community from access to gender-affirming care and from participation in sporting events,” they told CBC News.

So how is that going to affect people visiting from Canada? And why talk about in connection with “2SLGBTQI+ persons” as opposed to trans persons?

In March, Tennessee’s governor signed laws banning drag performances in front of children and restricting medical treatment for transgender youth.

The BBC keeps repeating that lie. The law doesn’t “restrict medical treatment” for kids who think they’re trans, it restricts novel, controversial, arguably harmful interventions that fiddle with kids’ sexual development.

Two months later, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed bills banning children from undergoing transgender medical treatments or going to drag shows, and restricting pronoun use in classrooms.

A little better, but only a little. The “treatments” aren’t medical and they aren’t treatments as commonly understood. The “restricting pronoun use” is absurd too. Legislators aren’t telling teachers to stop using pronouns.

The truth is, trans ideology and the practices that stem from it are so ridiculous that they can’t be reported on honestly without making it clear how ridiculous they are, so news outlets end up just lying about them.

First rule: grab everything that belongs to women. Every single thing.

[Sorry about the Fox source.]

The first tweet in full:

A sorority at the University of Wyoming is being forced to accommodate a 6’2 trans-identified male after a suit brought by six of the female members was rejected. Women from Kappa Kappa Gamma (KKG) sued the national leadership of their sorority after expressing discomfort with the presence of Artemis Langford, who they said was watching [them], sometimes with a visible erection.

“It’s very disheartening that when you’re a 6’2″, 260lb man you’re treated as the victim,” said one of the women involved in the suit.

Attorney Cassie Craven now accuses KKG of “retaliation” and told Laura Ingraham that the legal “fight” will continue.

“The fight continues. It’s interesting that we can’t define women in a court of law. But this isn’t about defining women any more, it’s about erasing women. Now it appears that being a woman is nothing more than a clever game of semantics.”

Not even a clever game, a quite silly and stupid game, yet it works.

There it is, the “Karen” ideology in all its naked venom.

The Green Party seems to have “Trans Ally”d itself off a cliff.

Shadow hangs over the future of the Green Party of England and Wales, as the party’s official financial accounts suggest a legal challenge from a former deputy leader could bring the organisation down as a “going concern”.

The latest accounts from the Greens, filed with the Electoral Commission, reveal a warning from auditors that a “material uncertainty exists regarding legal claims” as to whether the party will continue to remain financially afloat.

Byline Times has learnt that this uncertainty revolves around impending legal claims from several gender critical activists – including former deputy leader Shahrar Ali, who is suing the party over alleged discrimination based on his views about gender and sex.

Shahrar Ali, an academic who was joint deputy leader of the party between 2014 and 2016, is a prominent critic of the Green Party’s official stance on gender issues, including the party’s backing for self-identification and the principle that ‘trans women are women’. He has stood unsuccessfully for the leadership three times, but is now embroiled in a fierce legal battle with the executive. 

Legal battles are expensive.

“What it can do is put the party in a position where it can’t employ staff any more and its member income is basically going on servicing the debt. The assumption is at this point many members will leave etc. so the income will go down. It’s not really about the compensation – which at £34,000 isn’t much in the scheme of things – it’s the legal costs to defend. 

“So the party will still exist, but in a much diminished state, with much less staff and much less success going forward because of it.”

All because of the party’s war on women.

Two women who were booted from the party for not submitting to gender ideology are also suing.

Return of Veronica Ivy:

Veronica Ivy aka Rhys McKinnon was thinking he could do whatever he wanted all the time, because he’s that Sacred Entity, a trans woman, or at least he says he is. Turns out he can’t do whatever he wants all the time.

Another _______ has apologized to the LGBTQ+++++++ communinny for saying ________ and promises she will never never never utter an opinion again.

Pop singer Róisín Murphy has apologised after criticising the use of puberty blockers by transgender children.

The Irish musician, formerly the frontwoman of Moloko who has since released a series of acclaimed solo albums, had dismayed swathes of her fanbase – which includes a sizeable LGTBQ+ quotient – with a statement posted on her personal Facebook account.

She wrote: “Puberty blockers are fucked, absolutely desolate, big pharma laughing all the way to the bank. Little mixed-up kids are vulnerable and need to be protected, that’s just true.” She pre-empted criticism, writing “please don’t call me a terf, please don’t keep using that word against women”.

She was right, right, right, right, and right. Naturally she had to grovel.

Somebody took a screengrab and took it to Twitter, because of course somebody did. So she abased herself.

She said the issue of puberty blockers, a treatment used by transgender children to delay the development of sex characteristics that don’t align with their gender, “was something that had been on my mind”, but acknowledged she was “stepping out of line” by commenting about them on Facebook.

Stop that, Guardian. “Acknowledged” assumes that she was “stepping out of line,” and she wasn’t.

But remember: it’s not social contagion, it’s not it’s not it’s NOT. It’s absolutely medical physical brainical; it’s so real you can touch it. It’s not in the mind, it’s in the body.

The NY Times:

The small Midwestern gender clinic was buckling under an unrelenting surge in demand.

Last year, dozens of young patients were seeking appointments every month, far too many for the clinic’s two psychologists to screen. Doctors in the emergency room downstairs raised alarms about transgender teenagers arriving every day in crisis, taking hormones but not getting therapy.

The clinic opened in 2017.

It was the only place for hundreds of miles where distressed adolescents could see a team of experts to help them transition to a different gender.

I wonder if the distressed adolescents had any chance of seeing a team of experts who could, alternatively, help them come to terms with their sex. I wonder if they got to see any experts who would advise them not to “transition to a different gender.”

But as the number of these patients soared, the clinic became overwhelmed — and soon found itself at the center of a political storm. In February, Jamie Reed, a former case manager, went public with explosive allegations, claiming in a whistle-blower complaint that doctors at the clinic had hastily prescribed hormones with lasting effects to adolescents with pressing psychiatric problems.

Well, that answers that question. No, they didn’t, or at least a lot of them didn’t.

The turmoil in St. Louis underscores one of the most challenging questions in gender care for young people today: How much psychological screening should adolescents receive before they begin gender treatments?

Let’s ask more questions like that. How much psychological screening should adolescents receive before they cut their own heads off?

Maybe, just maybe, adolescents shouldn’t be getting “gender treatments” at all. Maybe the whole thing is embarrassingly stupid ideological nonsense which has nothing to do with medical treatment and should be discouraged.

Shaped by ideas pioneered in Europe, these clinics have opened over the past decade to serve the growing number of young people seeking hormonal medications to transition.

Why is the number growing? Why weren’t masses of young people doing this 50 years ago? What is the role of these “ideas” pioneered in Europe?

With its psychologists overbooked, the clinic relied on external therapists, some with little experience in gender issues, to evaluate the young patients’ readiness for hormonal medications. Doctors prescribed hormones to patients who had obtained such approvals, even adolescents whose medical histories raised red flags. Some of these patients later stopped identifying as transgender, and received little to no support from the clinic after doing so.

Oops! Oh well. Send in the next patient.

Pediatric gender medicine is a nascent specialty, and few studies have tracked how patients fare in the long term, making it difficult for doctors to judge who is likely to benefit.

So they err on the side of wrecking the patients’ bodies. How very Hippocratic Oath.

They started slowly, and then sped up.

When Dr. Spack and Dr. Edwards-Leeper opened the Boston clinic, they hewed closely to the Dutch approach. In its first five years, the clinic treated just 70 patients.

Similar clinics opened around the country, diverging over time from the strict Dutch protocols into an affirming approach that prioritized a child’s inner sense of gender.

Thus creating a horror show.

More stupidity and bullying, this time aimed at medical staff. What could go wrong?

A noticeboard at one of London’s biggest hospitals is advising staff not to ask patients their name in case it causes offence to trans people.

Critics have said that the poster, at the Royal Free Hospital, would in effect leave doctors unable to access a patient’s records and is against General Medical Council rules.

The hospital has been displaying materials as part of an “allyship scheme” that is supposed to be more inclusive.

Why?

Why can’t hospitals just be allowed to get on with their work, rather than making displays of trans allyship? Why would a hospital be a good place for hectoring noticeboards? Why can’t trans activists just shut up for a change?

The noticeboard is for staff, the Times says, so I guess that means patients aren’t forced to see it, which is some small mercy, but it’s still a bossy nagging presumptuous piece of crap.

“What you think their pronouns should be does not matter a single bit.”

People with a brain have no opinion on what anyone’s luxury pronouns should be, because that’s not a thing. People know what third-person pronouns go with what sex, end of story. Medical staff have more important things to keep in mind than anybody’s bespoke pronouns. Shut up, get out, and take your poster with you.

What the hell is the point of telling hospital staff to listen more and talk less? A hospital isn’t a pub or a living room.

As for telling hospital staff they don’t need to know what sex their patients are…come on.

Remember when hospitals had noticeboards like this urging respect for women? No, neither do I.

Gee, I dunno, ya think?

Have we broken the climate?

The record-shattering heatwaves, wildfires and floods destroying lives in the US, Europe, India, China and beyond in 2023 have raised an alarming question: have humanity’s relentless carbon emissions finally pushed the climate crisis into a new and accelerating phase of destruction?

Or is it nothing to do with the climate? Is it just bad luck? God’s wrath? A typo somewhere?

The scientists told us that, despite it certainly feeling as if events had taken a frightening turn, the global heating seen to date was entirely in line with three decades of scientific predictions. Being proved right was cold comfort, they said, as their warnings had so far been largely in vain.

And that’s not going to change.

However, a “tiny window” of opportunity remained open to tackle the climate crisis, they said, with humanity having all the tools needed. The researchers overwhelmingly pointed to one action as critical: slashing the burning of fossil fuels down to zero.

Which is not going to happen.

“July has been the hottest month in human history and people around the world are suffering the consequences,” said Prof Piers Forster, of the University of Leeds, UK. “But this is what we expected at [this level] of warming. This will become the average summer in 10 years’ time unless the world cooperates and puts climate action top of the agenda.”

But the world won’t cooperate. It won’t cooperate to end war or poverty or slavery or subordination of women, and it won’t cooperate to stop using fossil fuels.

It seems he’s back.

From the article:

The principal highlighted to parents preparations for what he said may be an onslaught of media and potential controversary over trans teacher Kayla Lemieux’s return to the classroom, which included special entry and exit plans.

These will include “having students enter and exit the building using assigned doors at entry and dismissal” and “locking exterior doors during school hours, only using the front main doors during school hours” while “all students and visitors will be required to use an intercom system to enter and exit the building” and asking parents “to email or call before coming to the school if they wish to visit to speak to an employee.”

All for the sake of this insultingly ridiculous man who wears two basketballs shoved down his shirt.

While Lemieux has not responded to questions about the transfer to another school board, the Hamilton high school’s principal echoed the HWDSB’s message in his memo to parents.

“We are writing to you today because we anticipate the school your child is attending this year, Nora Frances Henderson, may receive some level of public attention, and we want to communicate what this means for you, your children and our school,” wrote Fisher.

While he didn’t name Lemieux specifically, he did tell parents the teacher is “an experienced educator” who was “recently the subject of public attention, pertaining to their gender expression, while teaching at a school in a different community.”

It’s not “gender expression,” it’s an insulting mocking sneering caricature of women. If this asshole showed up to teach school looking like Al Jolson would the administration be pampering him this way?

“Our foremost priority is the success of our students,” Fisher wrote. “We are committed to maintaining a professional environment that is safe, inclusive, and conducive to their learning.”

Clearly that’s not their foremost priority at all.

Absolutely nuts.

A senior woman in the United Kingdom was visited by police after being caught taking a photograph of a sticker critical of gender ideology. Eve, whose identity is being protected at her request, was questioned at her home for over 30 minutes by officers of the West Yorkshire Police.

The same police who are in deep trouble for bullying and assaulting a teenage girl for no reason.

Speaking to Reduxx, Eve explained that the ordeal began in March after she spotted a sticker she thought was interesting while on a walk. The small sticker, which read “Keep Males Out Of Women-Only Spaces” had been placed on top of a large trans pride poster outside of Happy Valley Pride, a Hebden Bridge pride organization. Finding it interesting, Eve says she snapped a photo before continuing on her walk.

She snapped a photo of a poster.

Four weeks later, on April 30, Eve says West Yorkshire Police showed up at her home to question her on the photo she had taken.

They have got to be kidding. A woman pauses for a second to take a snap of a poster and the cops show up? Is there a law against taking photos in the UK???

She was upset and frightened to see them, because she thought they were there to tell her someone had died.

But Eve explained that after she opened the door to them, their opening remark was: “We have received a complaint so we have a duty to investigate it.”

A complaint that she took a photo of a poster? It might as well be a complaint that she walked past the poster, or that she was outside without a chaperone, or that she breathed. In fact the West Yorks Police might as well be the Taliban.

After inviting the officers into her home, Eve says they “gave a sermon” and explained that her personal information “had been given to them by Happy Valley Pride.”

How did Happy Valley Pride have any personal information of hers? Seriously: how? Nobody knows. Nobody knows how HV Pride got her full name, address, and post code in order to give them to the police.

Police questioned Eve for 30 minutes, apparently attempting to determine if she had been the individual responsible for placing the pro-woman sticker on the trans pride poster.

After the interrogation, the police advised Eve that “no crime had taken place.” But, through a Freedom of Information Request she later submitted, Eve says that the investigation into her was catalogued as a “non-crime hate incident” by West Yorkshire Police. According to the force’s website, a non-crime hate incident is defined as “any non-crime incident which is perceived by the victim or any other person to be motivated by hostility or prejudice.”

Oh well if any other person perceives it that way there is no more to be said.

Honestly they seem to have lost their minds over there. It makes 1984 look benign.

Speaking to Reduxx, Eve questioned how police decided to proceed in “investigating” her for “taking a photograph of an inanimate object on the pavement outside a building,” and said she submitted a complaint to police following the ordeal.

…

“I see this as police intimidation to censor my thoughts and to try and gag any voice of dissent,” Eve said, noting that most burglaries in her area do not result in an in-person police visit.

But taking a photo of a sticker on a poster, whoooomama, call the cops.

He does whatever he wants to do.

Former President Trump attacked federal officials connected to the Biden administration as “fascist thugs” just ahead of a Monday morning hearing before a judge who previously warned Trump that “inflammatory statements” would compel her to speed up his trial.

I wonder, who is more like a literal fascist thug, Biden or Trump? I’m not a huge fan of Biden, but it does seem to me that he loses this particular competition.

In a post Monday morning on Truth Social, Trump called Smith “deranged,” suggested federal officials investigating his actions were “political SleazeBags” and accused Biden allies in the White House of being “fascist thugs.”

“It has just been reported that aides to TRUMP prosecutor, Deranged Jack Smith, met with high officials at the White House just prior to these political SleazeBags Indicating me OVER NOTHING,” Trump wrote.

Hmmm. Again, who is more like an actual political sleaze bag, Trump or Jack Smith? Who displays more deranged behavior, Trump or Jack Smith?

“If this is so, which it is, that means that Biden and his Fascist Thugs knew and APPROVED of this Country dividing Form of Election Interference, despite their insisting that they ‘knew nothing.’ It’s all a BIG LIE

Again, who does more to divide the country, Trump or Biden and his administration? Sorry to be dull but again I think Trump wins in a walk.