Whittle actually said welcome!!! And meant it totally sincerely and not at all sarcastically teasingly figuratively please beat them uply!!!

Originally a comment by latsot on Refusing to serve.

I was outside the pub in the beer garden (damn pub had a step to get in) so I didn’t see any of this. But the Scottish and Irish witches outside with me didn’t take it lying down. There was a lot of protest singing, mostly about penises, led by actual Julia Long, which I have to say I didn’t expect. There’s video circulating, I’ll post it when I’ve had chance to find it.

The attack on Tony was shocking. He’s a lovely and gentle man who attends loads of women’s events, all over the place, supporting quietly in the background and helping out. I hope the police acted quickly in getting hold of the CCTV from the pub.

It was an incredible couple of days in Belfast. I was mooching around at the back during the actual event, talking to the other naughty kids, and I didn’t hear a single word. I’m watching the video now.

I’m especially looking forward to Brandubh’s talk (the 14 year old who read out her poem). I was talking to Brandubh and he mother throughout the day and her story is a horrifying and important one. I’m going to put her in touch with Glinner to see if he wants to write about it on his substack (I’m quite sure he will).

This is Bran’s talk:

Judy Blume clarified or explained or reworded or something yesterday.

It doesn’t really clarify though. More like that other thing. What does “support the trans community” mean? What does “stand with the trans community” mean? Why does she feel nervously compelled to say she does both in one short statement? Why does she mention a “trans community” at all? Why does she say “the trans community” instead of “trans people”? Was she told to word it that way?

As for “LGBTQIA+ people” (I guess it’s ok to call them people but not trans the community?) – what does the Q mean? Why is the A there? Was she handed a script and told to tweet it or else?

I don’t know. At any rate it’s clearly a very public backstab of JK Rowling.

H/t Rev David Brindley

Originally a comment by Rob on Give a New Zealand welcome.

First, not a ******* NZ welcome, the trans lobby can own that one all to themselves.

Second, advocating violence.

Third, The haka is not about intimidation, it is about honour and honouring.*

Fourth, to use the haka in the way he advocates would do both sides great dishonour and back in the day would be grounds for war.

Fifth, is a white English bloke really suggesting that white Irish and English (presumably) people appropriate the culture of brown Maori from the other side of the planet for their own nefarious purposes? Because if he is (he is), there are a lot of people who’d like to have a word with him about that.

No matter how he tries to spin that, he’s just disgustingly wrong from one end to the other.

* Haka and how they are used is a lot more complex than I can cover here, plus I’m not expert in the nuances and it’s not my culture to be definitive about. In modern use the most common haka we see are a challenge to an honoured foe, or a welcome (combined with a challenge) to an honoured guest. Traditionally one type of haka was used to prepare warriors psychologically and physically for battle. Haka are the cultural property of the particular family/grouping/tribe that used or developed that haka. The best known of them all is undoubtedly Ka Mate. The use of this Haka by the All Blacks rugby team resulted in most New Zealanders being able to have a crack at performing it (often badly) and many non-NZers and even companies using it. As a result the Iwi (tribe), Ngati Toa, that the composer came from took a legal challenge to demonstrate ownership.

Trans man Stephen Whittle, who advertises himself as “Prof” and OBE, PhD on Twitter, urged people to use violence against Kellie-Jay Keene in Belfast.

This movement sure does bring out the best in people.

Gee, they finally noticed.

‘Dangerous’ inmate Barbie Kardashian to move prisons amid fear she could follow through on threats.

Prison bosses are struggling to find a suitable segregation unit for dangerous transgender inmate Barbie Kardashian.

The 21-year-old was last month jailed for four-and-a-half years for threatening to rape, torture and murder her mother.

It is understood Kardashian will be moved from Limerick Prison in coming weeks because staff do not feel safe with her being housed there.

…

A source said Kardashian, who was born Gabrielle Alejandro Gentile and changed her name by deed poll, is deemed too dangerous to mix and poses a serious threat to inmates and staff.

The source told the Irish Sunday Mirror: “Meetings are set to take place this month to discuss a better location for Kardashian.

“She is deemed very dangerous and requires a number of prison staff to open her cell and accompany her anywhere she goes.”

Like Hannibal Lecter.

In 2020, Ms Kardashian was granted a gender recognition certificate by the Department of Social Protection, in recognition of her identifying as female.

Which couldn’t possibly be just more aggression, right?

The court heard Ms Kardashian is currently on a waiting list to be assessed for “appropriate medical treatment” in relation to her gender.

What would appropriate medical treatment in relation to her gender be? Medical treatment for the gender you aren’t isn’t “appropriate” so what can that claim mean? I can’t parse it.

We need to set up a campaign group of women, says Ellie Mae O’Hagan, Head of External Engagement at The Good Law Project. Huh. We women agree, which is why several such groups exist. Standing For Women is one.

https://twitter.com/elliemaeohagan/status/1647585735883517952

Oh, women who support “trans rights,” by which the Good Law Project means “do everything men who identify as trans tell us to do.” No thanks – no anti-feminist women’s groups for me.

Oh no, we’re emboldened and vocal. How horrifying.

Honestly what a fool to set herself up for derision that way, complaining about women being emboldened of all things. We’re supposed to be timid and shy and in hiding? She sounds like men complaining about the Pankhursts. We’re supposed to be afraid and we’re supposed to be silent. What an enticing political stance!

Snerk. Yep, that is right.

Remind us why they deserve all this?

Queen Elizabeth II may have been styled the “people’s monarch”, but for much of her reign, and especially its last 40 years, the amassing of vast wealth was simply de rigueur for the UK’s financial and landed elites.

As the Guardian investigation into the cost of the royal family reveals, the late queen was at the forefront of her class’s pursuit of wealth extraction. Using royal privilege, the crown secretively exempted itself from public scrutiny and taxation. Royal fortunes soared. And this was the rule, not the exception.

She wasn’t “styled ‘the people’s monarch'” by me thank you very much.

The consequent optics for the incoming head of state are [bad]. His family’s vast accumulation of wealth is all the more glaring when juxtaposed with soaring levels of poverty and hardship among his subjects, including as many as 3 million children. But the one is part of the cause of the other. While the king may not have uttered “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche”, the parallel with the “great princess” who apparently did is not fanciful. Monarchy helps make vast disparities of wealth seem normal and natural, an enchanting part of our jolly heritage to be questioned only by mean-spirited and unpatriotic scoundrels.

Plus also their vast wealth is itself one of those vast disparities, to put it mildly.

This is where an incoming Labour government might make a stand. It could embrace rather than resist the change symbolised by the crowning of a new king. And it could do so in ways that in turn symbolise a new conception of public life: built on transparency, not the hiding of wealth in tax havens; on integrity, instead of the easy acceptance of gifts and payoffs; and on economic justice, rather than the hoarding of wealth by a few.

You’d have to start over with a completely different crew though.

The police are on the scene.

I’m wondering what the temperature is in Belfast. Two people in short sleeves, one person in a puffa jacket. Is it cold or hot?!

But more seriously I’m wondering if the cop will arrest the victim.

More from the annals of violence against people who reject gender ideology.

There’s also this but the audio is useless so I can’t actually tell what he said.

That “refusing to serve” thing…what does that remind me of…hmmmm…………….

Judy steps up next to Joanne and Hadley Freeman tells us about it. Power trio!

You can try to explain Judy Blume in numbers: her books for children have sold 90 million copies worldwide, most famously Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. Over a 54- year career she has won more than 90 literary awards and been translated into 32 languages.

But this doesn’t explain her impact on generations of children, particularly girls. Blume, more than any other author before or since, taught kids about masturbation (in Deenie), menstruation (. . . It’s Me, Margaret) and sex (Forever). She reassured them that hating your younger sibling sometimes is normal (Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing) and that terrible things can happen to good kids and they’ll survive (Tiger Eyes). Most of all she taught them that it’s fine to be exactly what they are: ordinary kids.

There’s a new movie adaptation of It’s Me, Margaret.

I tell Blume how strangely thrilling it is to see a movie about children where none of them are in possession of magical powers. “Yes, children are so used to superheroes now, aren’t they?” she says. Even in JK Rowling’s Harry Potter books the kids are magic, and I love those, I say.

“And I love her,” Blume immediately interjects. “I am behind her 100 per cent as I watch from afar.” Blume is referring to the abuse Rowling has received for speaking up in defence of women’s sex-based rights, and given that Blume has faced repeated attacks since the 1980s, for her books’ descriptions of adolescent sexuality and puberty, she knows what it’s like to be pilloried as an author.

Why was she pilloried?

[The movie] also keeps in all the details — adolescent lust, the chat about menstruation, Margaret’s anxieties about religion — that have caused the book to be attacked multiple times by right-wing religious groups, alongside other Blume books for similar reasons. Blume has long been a courageously punchy critic of these groups, and just the day before she and I talk it was reported that Florida politicians are considering a ban on any discussion of menstruation in schools’ sex education before the 6th grade, when children are 12.

Well you can see their point. If you teach kids about menstruation when they’re 10 they might just start doing it right then and there.

“It’s so bad. If it was bad in the 1980s, this is triple quadruple that, because this time it’s coming from the government, who are making laws. They say they want to protect kids, but it’s more like they want them to not think or ask questions,” she says.

It’s strange how the attacks on you have come from the right, whereas the ones on Rowling have come from the left, I say.

But a strange, twisted, upside-down version of the left, that believes in magic and detests women.

The only way to defend “the right to bear arms” is to make sure everyone has more and more and more guns. Literally everyone: toddlers included.

South Dakota’s governor told an audience of people that her two-year-old grandchild has several guns.

While speaking on Friday at a National Rifle Association (NRA) lobbying leadership forum in Indiana, the Republican governor Kristi Noem told audience members her toddler grandchild has multiple guns, reported Mediaite.

The toddler granchild is not yet two, and she has a rifle and a shotgun. (It’s not clear what “having” means. I don’t suppose they’re in her toy box. It could just mean that they’re officially her guns, but she can’t just grab one and start shooting. Then again these are lunatics, so maybe she is literally packing heat.)

Noem also signed an executive order during her remarks that seeks to “further protect the second amendment rights of South Dakotans”, and was joined on stage by the NRA’s CEO, Wayne LaPierre.

“South Dakota is setting the standard for the most second amendment friendly state in the nation,” said Noem when discussing the executive order.

By which she means gun-friendly. The way you demonstrate your extreme cuddly friendliness toward the second amendment is to have more guns than anyone else, which requires buying new guns every few days in order to keep up.

Like this kind of thing for instance. Why aren’t the BBC and Labour and the Independent constantly lamenting the fact that abused women can’t escape their abuse because they have nowhere to go? Why isn’t that as tragic and desperate as the plight of men who enjoy pretending to be women?

More than 10,000 women escaping domestic abuse across England were refused safe housing last year, amid warnings that many could be left homeless or driven back to dangerous partners as a result of a “woeful” lack of safe accommodation.

Official figures seen by the Observer found that almost 8,000 households referred to a safe accommodation service did not receive support because there was no capacity. A further 3,000 were denied places because the shelter “could not meet the needs of the household”, with figures suggesting this was often due to mental health issues, drug and alcohol use or disability.

Why do we hear so much about the tragic plight of men who claim to be women and so little about actual women trapped in violence and/or homelessness?

“Anyone who’s facing domestic abuse and who is not assisted to enter safe accommodation is at such huge risk. The consequences are that they’re exploited and abused on the streets, or they are driven back in an abusive relationship,” said Hannana Siddiqui, head of policy, campaigns and research at the women’s rights group Southall Black Sisters. “If they’re not provided with proper housing and support for themselves and their children, then what choices have they got left? A lot of them are very low income or no income.”

But we don’t hear much about this, because so much oxygen is used up on bemoaning the anguish of men who say they are women.

Even this article manages to steer the conversation back to those men.

Leni Morris, chief executive of the LGBT+ anti-abuse charity Galop, said: “We see LGBT+ victims of abuse having to choose between staying in dangerous abusive situations or risking street homelessness. We often spend days trying to find accommodation for people we work with – sometimes for that person to arrive at that refuge space and face homophobia or transphobia from other residents and have to flee again.”

What kind of “transphobia”? Does she mean Galop sends a man who claims to be a woman to a women’s shelter and the women are terrified? That kind of “transphobia”?

Ahhhhhh just in case you wanted a little cheerer-upper…

Originally a comment by Artymorty on Oppression for the Bugatti set.

I think collective guilt and shame about the past’s homophobia casts a long shadow in the minds of progressive Euroamericans. And as for gay people ourselves, we can add personal trauma to the mix. We seem as a society, gay and straight alike, to be transferring all of our unresolved feelings about gay rights over to the trans phenomenon.

I was having dinner with someone the other night, who is sympathetic to my position. But he was very gravely concerned about the plight of “vulnerable feminine gay boys” and their anguish in the hands of cruel Republicans passing so many “anti-trans hate bills.”

I tried to take apart each of the preconceptions packed into such sentiments: trans doesn’t mean gender nonconforming; there are many ways to address anxiety over gender nonconformity that don’t involve gender identity or gender medicine; a lot of legislation being introduced is no doubt partly cynical culture-war baiting on the part of Republicans, but nevertheless, legislation to pull back on medical experiments on kids and the elimination of women’s spaces is agreeable in principle; mostly this movement is driven by entitled transvestites who’ve found a loophole and are making a giant power-grab; the curbing of free speech and general environment of panic around this topic is dangerous; homophobic and misogynistic tropes are being reinforced; etc, etc…

And he didn’t disagree with any of my points at all. But I could see that his heart wasn’t budging. A deep, emotional attachment to this cause has been generated, and it’s going to take a lot of deprogramming to undo it. This is the domain of religious belief, not rational thinking. Even among some of the most atheistic people.

I keep wondering about this “most vulnerable” thing – the endless repetition of the claim that trans people are “among the most vulnerable” or just plain “the most vulnerable.”

Why do people think that?

In a world where we have wars, genocides, torture, rape, poverty, earthquakes, floods, droughts, poverty, epidemics, secret police, criminal gangs, poverty, racism, enslavement, exploitation, poverty – how is it that people who claim to be the gender that doesn’t match their bodies are described as “the most vulnerable”?

That’s a genuine question, because I have no idea what the answer is. It’s like sitting in front of a person with multiple broken bones and severe burns, complaining about a scratch. It’s Luxury Oppression. It’s Pretend Oppression for the Comfortable. You’d think even lefty men who hate women would notice that part.

University and College Union aka UCU issues a statement:

The Government’s plan to review the Equality Act 2010, with a mind to change existing provisions in relation to sex and gender, is an attack on the limited rights and protections to which trans people are currently entitled.

Changing the understanding of ‘sex’ to refer solely to ‘biological sex’ would effectively eradicate the ability of trans people to gain full legal recognition for their gender identity. This flies in the face of established UCU policy in favour of self-identification, and would enable acts of discrimination against trans and non-binary people to go unchallenged.

So UCU has a policy in favour of self-identification. Is that an inclusive policy? Does it include all possible self-identifications? Should people be able to force everyone to endorse their self-identification no matter what they identify as?

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC)  is there to protect and uphold the rights of all groups who face discrimination. This must include trans and non-binary people…

But it must also include women, and some of the purported “rights” that trans ideologues demand have the unfortunate side effect of obliterating women’s rights. Why should the demands of trans people outweigh the rights of women? Please explain.

This must include trans and non-binary people, but at the moment the EHRC is failing in this part of its remit. It’s advice to the government on this issue has highlighted a number of ways in which trans people would be excluded as a result of the changes being considered. 

Excluded how, from what? You mean women’s sports and prizes and records and firsts? But all those things are meant for women, not men who call themselves women. If women are forced to share them with men, that excludes women.

Time and again, the Tory Government has shown itself to be against trans and non-binary inclusion – from blocking the path of Gender Recognition Act (GRA) reform in Scotland to their manufactured culture war against the trans community, one the of the UK’s smallest and most vulnerable groups.

Mindless cliches repeated for the billionth time instead of anything thoughtful or reasonable. No thought about what inclusion means, no analysis of what a “community” is in this context, of how we define “groups,” of why trans people are “most vulnerable” while apparently women are not. Childish activisty slogans in the place where thought should be. Where are the adults??

No legislation is perfect, but seeking to change an established law in a way that would actively remove rights from a marginalised group is deeply troubling.

What about all the women who have had their rights removed? Why does the UCU not even mention them?

We are also clear that our own union is an inclusive one which recognises that trans men are men, trans women are women and non-binary people’s identities are valid. 

It doesn’t “recognise” that nonsense, it capitulates to it while trying to make the rest of us do the same.

Where where where are the adults?

Another victim of the crossfire:

AS Scotland emerged from lockdown restrictions in the summer of 2021 Mandy Rhodes began to feel deeply uncomfortable at her work. As the long-time editor of Holyrood magazine, Ms Rhodes is one of Scotland’s most influential political journalists. Her workplace is the Scottish Parliament where she has been reporting and commenting on the business of government for nearly 20 years.

Well we know how that’s going to go.

In recent years she’s become one of several prominent feminists who have found themselves targeted by transgender activists for espousing gender-critical views. Yet, nothing in her long career had prepared her for what she calls the malice beginning to filtrate Scotland’s corridors of power.

Infiltrate, I think he means. Or insinuate it way into, or similar.

She recalls a day in August 2020 when she says it became clear to her that the Scottish Parliament could no longer be considered a welcoming place for women like her who were refusing to remain silent over trans issues.

“I was applying the final touches to a magazine looking back at that term in Parliament and had asked each of the party leaders to reflect on what they felt had been achieved in the preceding months. We were sitting almost on deadline, waiting for Patrick Harvie’s piece to come in.”

Patrick Harvie:  Scottish Green Party, MSP for Glasgow.

“Eventually, it came through very late at night. Basically, it was a diatribe about how Holyrood magazine was part of a transphobic campaign and how much I was personally part of it.

“No one who knows me would ever describe me as shy and retiring. Yet I sat in my office crying. It felt like I was – and I don’t like the term ‘bullying’ as it’s used far too much – under siege at that point. I found it very disturbing that a political leader would send me something I’d requested for publication in the nation’s only political magazine and which is part of the architecture around that parliament and use it to call me a transphobe. So, for me going into Parliament now in the knowledge that there are people there who think I’m a bigot is truly astonishing.”

The term “bullying” does get used a lot, but on the other hand there is a lot of it, so that’s at least part of why it’s used a lot. Often it’s the only word that really names what we’re talking about, so we end up having to use it.

Lucy Bannerman at The Times on Daniel Radcliffe’s confidence in the wisdom of children:

Daniel Radcliffe, the Harry Potter actor, has said that children should be trusted to transition from one gender to another if they wish.

The actor said that it was “condescending” for adults to question whether such a life-changing decision was in a child’s best interests.

Radcliffe appeared to support gender transition for young people of any age, while hosting a group discussion for an American LGBT charity, the Trevor Project.

Hosting it quite badly, I would add. I watched the brief clip where he says that fatuous thing, and discovered that he’s remarkably clumsy and inarticulate for a professional actor.

In the half-hour conversation, which has been viewed almost 100,000 times on YouTube, Radcliffe asked six young people about their experiences of identifying as transgender and non-binary.

When Daley, a participant who was born male but identifies as female, insisted that it was possible for an 11-year-old to decide to change gender, Radcliffe said: “But there are also people who do have a slightly condescending but well-meaning attitude of like, ‘Well, people are young and like . . . you know, that is a huge decision’. I’d love to hear from all of you about, like, why we can trust kids to tell us who they are.”

He’s like down with the kids but like he can’t like form a complete sentence, especially not a complete sentence without the word “like” appearing several times.

Daley replied: “I don’t understand why I can’t just decide that I’m a girl. You don’t have to be 18 to decide, ‘oh I am who I am’.”

Another participant, who transitioned from male to female, added: “I don’t think we give children enough credit for coming into the world and having a sense of purity and understanding for themselves.”

When that participant, Deity, revealed how she started hormone treatment at an undisclosed age, a week after deciding she was transgender, the actor replied: “Wow, that’s amazing.”

Yes, it is.

Julie Burchill is enjoyably unimpressed by Daniel Radcliffe.

Harry Potter actor Daniel Radcliffe has opined – more in sorrow than in anger, no doubt, with a caring, sharing smile on those sensitive lips – that adults concerned about children changing gender are ‘condescending’. More specifically, he ‘affirmed’ the beliefs of six trans and nonbinary children at a discussion organised by LGBTQ charity The Trevor Project this week, saying: ‘There are people who also have a slightly condescending, but well-meaning attitude of “People are young… and it is a huge decision”.’ According to Radcliffe, ‘We can trust kids to tell us who they are’.

Can we? Then why can’t they vote or join the military or marry that nice rapist they met online?

No, we can’t automatically “trust” what kids tell us, because kids are vulnerable and also because kids can get things wrong. Certainly parents should pay attention to what their kids tell them, but that’s quite different from a blanket assertion that children never make mistakes about “who they are.”

Half of the 5,000 children referred to the NHS’ Tavistock clinic from 2020 to 2022 were under 15 – and over a dozen were under four years old. This is despite the fact that teenagers’ brains are still growing. Unless they swallow gender ideology, of course – then the brain growth stops and they stay stupid.

Funny but also tragically accurate.

One of the handy effects of wokeism is that it conveniently ignores class as a form of privilege. So if you went to a fee-paying school, but then identify as ‘queer’ or an ‘ally’, you can then behave as if you had a tougher start than, say, JK Rowling. As a child, Rowling was told that, due to her social class, the nearest she could ever get to her dream of being a writer was being a teacher.

But now the born to class privilege Daniel Radcliffe gets to lecture Rowling from a very great height, thanks to darling gender ideology, which insists (loudly) that being trans is by far the worst oppression there is.