The Independent reports:

World Athletics has banned trans women from international competition, Sebastian Coe has confirmed.

That is, World Athletics has banned men from international competition. You’d think it would go without saying. If it’s women’s, it’s not men’s.

The governing body has opted to exclude male-to-female transgender athletes and those with differences in sex development (DSD) from female competition if they have gone through male puberty.

…

Lord Coe, president of World Athletics, has confirmed the “difficult” decision to change its rules starting on 31 March.

“Difficult” only because of tons of senseless pressure. I actually remember when everyone took it for granted that things for women were for women.

“The decision that the council made is a primarily principled based decision about the over-arching need to protect the female category. This is what our sport is here to do. And I think the council has done that today. We continue to take the view that we must maintain fairness for female athletes above all other considerations.”

What other considerations would there be? People wouldn’t stand around debating whether we should let boxers fight small children; why do they stand around debating whether men should invade women’s athletics?

However, LGBTQI advocacy groups say excluding trans athletes amounts to discrimination.

Not all of them. Certainly not all L advocacy groups – why not ask them? Anyway it’s stupid. We rely on discrimination all the time. If we’re shopping for pears we discriminate between oranges and pears. If we want to read a particular book we discriminate between that book and all the other books. We make choices; we’re allowed to do that. Women get to exclude men when they need to.

Starmer is perhaps reconsidering.

Sir Keir Starmer signalled a climbdown on Labour’s transgender stance on Thursday as he said lessons have to be learned from Scotland.

…

Sir Keir had previously vowed to reform the Gender Recognition Act to allow trans people to self-identify, but appeared to back away from the pledge during a press conference in Stoke-on-Trent.

Sir Keir told reporters: “I think that if we reflect on what’s happened in Scotland, the lesson I take from that is that if you’re going to make reforms, you have to carry the public with you.”

But who says they are reforms? Changes aren’t automatically reforms. If you’re going to make “reforms” that trash women’s rights, you don’t have to “carry the public with you,” you have to stop what you’re doing and listen to women.

It’s cheating to stack the deck in your favor by assuming your proposed changes are reforms.

In a message to the LGBT website Pink News for Pride in 2021, Sir Keir said his priority was “forming the next government so we can introduce legislation and change society so that, whoever you are, you can live a happy and fulfilled life”. 

What about people who identify as Keir Starmer, or Charles Windsor, or Elon Musk, or Ivanka Trump? Should we change society so that they can live happy fulfilled lives as their assumed identities?

Very fair and impartial reporting from the Guardian:

The independent senator Lidia Thorpe was pulled to the ground after attempting to storm the stage at a rally in Canberra held by anti-trans activist Kellie-Jay Keen, who also goes by the name of Posie Parker.

Draped in an Aboriginal flag, Thorpe struggled with police before she was stopped by them; she returned to the pro-trans rights rally to cheers.

Except that “anti-trans” isn’t the right label. The issue is the way trans ideology is shredding women’s rights. That’s too long for a label, but “anti-trans” is too inaccurate and prejudicial for a label.

Thorpe, who recently staged a protest attempting to block the Sydney Mardi Gras parade to protest Indigenous deaths in custody, said she had moved on Keen to protest homophobia and transphobia.

What homophobia? It’s not homophobic to try to defend women’s rights.

Thorpe also complained about her treatment by Australian federal police, alleging that it constituted assault. A spokesperson for Thorpe later clarified that the incident involved private security officers as well as AFP officers. The matter is being investigated by the AFP.

But she charged at KJK from behind. Should the federal police and security officers simply have let her keep going?

Outside Parliament House in Canberra on Thursday, the trans rights protesters referred to the Melbourne rally with a chant of “Posie Parker, you can’t hide, you’ve got Nazis on your side”.

In a tightly cropped video streaming on social media, Parker claimed this was an attempt to “silence” her and that she had been “aggressed upon”, as the pro-trans rally maintained a distance of 50 metres.

Except for Thorpe, who came charging up at her from behind. It looked pretty aggressive to me.

Earlier, the Liberal MP Bridget Archer told ABC Radio that organisers had “almost stopped pretending that it’s about women’s rights and they are openly saying that it is an anti-transgender protest”.

“If they want to talk about women’s safety, I don’t think that the issue of … same-sex bathrooms is where the issue of women’s safety is at,” she said. “The most unsafe place for women to be is in their own homes.

“In terms of safety, the transgender community have much higher rates of violence perpetrated against them than even women do, so I think it’s just nonsense.”

No they don’t. It’s not even close.

It’s all about the reckless.

As Fox News continued to broadcast lies about Dominion voting systems and the 2020 election, Tucker Carlson, one of its star hosts, used one word over and over to describe what the network was doing – “reckless”.

Those messages were the first pieces of evidence Justin Nelson, a lawyer representing Dominion, displayed on Tuesday as he began his argument for why a judge should rule the network defamed his client. “Reckless was a meaningful word” – in order to win the case, Nelson has to prove that Fox acted with “actual malice” – that its hosts, producers, and executives knew the statements were false or acted with reckless disregard to the truth.

Interesting. “Reckless disregard” is a legal term of art, so it’s interesting that Tucker Carlson called Fox reckless.

“Unlike every other single defamation case, we have in their own words the fact that they knew it was false,” Nelson said.

And even that they knew they knew.

It was an example that illustrated how the core of Dominion’s $1.6bn case against Fox are the words that came from the mouths of Fox’s employees. Regardless of what happens in the case going forward, Dominion may have already won: the messages offer a significant historical record of how top officials at one of America’s most powerful media organizations aired information they knew was false when American democracy was under attack.

It’s not even one of America’s most powerful media organizations, it’s the most powerful. Horrible but true.

What the Senator said about her intentions in storming up to KJK from behind and yelling “You don’t belong here!”:

“We do not tolerate this kind of filth being on Ngunnawal and Ngambri country. This Nazi support that these people have – they are racist, they are homophobic, they are destroying people’s lives. This country should be ashamed that they even let people like this in this country. Now I went to tell her, or that thing – that they are not welcome here. I got pulverized by the police for simply telling that person that they are not allowed to be here. So I’ve been assaulted by the police today as a sovereign [recites her Indigenous identities] woman, and the police need to answer for the assault, but also this government needs to answer why these people are allowed into this country.”

So first she says emphatically that “these people” are not allowed to be here, then she says the government needs to say why they are allowed to be here.

More centrally, she says she went to “tell this person that they are not allowed to be here.” But she is allowed to be there, which is why she is in fact there. More conspicuously, she didn’t just go tell KJK that at a convenient moment, she went up to her while she was addressing the Let Women Speak crowd, and interrupted her speech, i.e. tried to stop the woman speaking. She crashed KJK’s speech, then complained that security and the police forcibly stopped her.

And she didn’t get pulverized, either. She did end up on the ground, but that’s not so much because the police pushed her but because she was wearing stupid shoes. The police and security did forcibly stop her and move her away, yes, but I don’t think she would have tipped over if she hadn’t been wearing stupid catch me-fuck me shoes.

Also she didn’t offer any evidence that “these people are racist, they are homophobic.” I don’t think there is any such evidence.

Mr Menno is paying attention.

If you’re going to go wrestling the police it seems kind of stupid to wear a short tight skirt and high-heeled shoes with no backs. Jeans and trainers next time.

Welcome to the urinals, women.

The Lyric Hammersmith offers “all gender” toilets.

The Lyric Hammersmith has been criticised for leaving female theatregoers “uncomfortable” with their gender-inclusive lavatories which feature five urinals and one cubicle.

What’s “gender-inclusive” about having five urinals and one cubicle? Even leaving out, for the sake of argument, the fact that women don’t want to be in a room with a line of men pissing into urinals, why does Lyric Hammersmith think five men attend its plays to every one woman? Why five for men and one for women? How is that “gender-inclusive”?

The London theatre claims that it provides a range of facilities “to meet the needs of all the individuals who use our building”.

Why five for men and one for women?

A spokeswoman for the theatre said: “The Lyric Hammersmith Theatre is inclusive and welcoming to all. We provide a range of lavatory facilities to meet the needs of all the individuals who use our building.

How exactly is a room with five urinals and one cubicle “inclusive and welcoming to all”?

“These include gender specific, all gender, private accessible and changing places facilities. Our all-gender toilets were introduced in 2018 as part of our strategy for inclusivity and equality.”

How does five for men and one for women do that?

It was a beautiful spring day so I went to the far side of town to walk on a different beach from the one a 20 minute walk from me. On the last bus back, a few blocks from home, a teenage boy got on wearing this:

Updating to add:

It’s “funny.” It’s a “funny” T shirt.

The complete replacement of thought by wild assertions keeps surprising me, at least when it’s done by people who identify as Dr.

People “have autonomy over who they are” declares the doctor. Really? Do we? Do we have the autonomy to be absolutely anything we can put into words? Can we be dinosaurs, planets, the universe? Can we be a tooth, a bulb, a pebble, a cell, an atom?

The reality is there are very narrow limits on what we can be. We can grow and change and learn, certainly, we can improve or deteriorate, we can change ourselves to a considerable extent, but we can’t be just anything, and we especially can’t be just anything simply by saying so. We can’t be surgeons or engineers or lawyers simply by saying so; we have to put in the years of training first. We can’t be snakes or oceans or blizzards even with training. We can’t be the sex we weren’t born even with training.

Trump wants to be handcuffed, I guess kind of like Jesus schlepping the cross.

Donald Trump has told advisers that he wants to be handcuffed when he makes an appearance in court, if he is indicted by a Manhattan grand jury for his role in paying hush money to adult film star Stormy Daniels, multiple sources close to the former president have said.

Go ahead! Make a martyr of the poor saintly starved man!

Trump’s increasing insistence that he wants to be handcuffed behind his back for a perp walk appears to come from various motivations, including that he wants to project defiance in the face of what he sees as an unfair prosecution and that it would galvanize his base for his 2024 presidential campaign.

But above all, sources said he was deeply anxious that any special arrangements – like making his first court appearance by video link or skulking into the courthouse – would make him look weak or like a loser.

I kind of think he might be overthinking this a little. Being handcuffed wouldn’t actually make him look strong or like a winner.

People close to Trump were said to be unsure whether he is serious about being handcuffed and doing a perp walk, but he may be thwarted in his supposed ambitions if the district attorney, Alvin Bragg, decides against handcuffing him and refuses to allow him to be marched past the cameras.

Well then his millions of fans will pour into the street demanding that he be marched past the cameras in handcuffs. Maga!!

But the students were expressing their beliefs.

A West Midlands school has been criticised for failing to “teach controversial issues in a way that is safe for everyone”, after a gay Muslim speaker was challenged by students and later received death threats on social media.

An external report on Wood Green Academy in Wednesbury was commissioned after the incident in November last year, in which students questioned the speaker on his views about homosexuality and Islam.

Khakan Qureshi, founder of the Birmingham Asian LGBT group, was invited to the school’s sixth form to speak on “diversity in the face of adversity”, but the session appeared to descend into chaos, videos posted on social media showed.

After Qureshi said there wasn’t anything in the Qur’an that said homosexuality was a sin, students could be heard saying he was “offending people” and “advocating the wrong thing”.

Oops, that wasn’t the plan.

Teachers intervened, with one describing the students’ comments as “homophobia” and another using a reference to 9/11 to explain how the UK was a “tolerant society”.

The incident at the school of 1,500 students led to parents forming the Wood Green Academy Action Group, which said pupils were fearful about returning to school after the incident.

An independent report, sent to parents last month and seen by the Guardian, concluded: “There is clear evidence there is insufficient awareness and experience to be able to deliver the teaching of controversial issues in a way that is safe for everyone.”

I think the Guardian is being annoyingly evasive here. It looks as if the issue is that some Muslim students took the conservative goddy position that homosexuality is indeed a sin, and some teachers intervened, and now some Muslim parents are angry. That’s what it looks like, but unfortunately the Guardian is being coy about it.

The action group, which says it represents more than 300 parents, said the incident was the latest in a long line of concerns about the school, and their frustration was directed towards how the school had handled the situation rather than the speaker himself.

Are the 300 parents of any particular religion?

The group said it had collected other complaints from pupils and parents, including a pupil being harassed for wearing a long skirt and headscarf, the school refusing to create a designated prayer room, mothers being denied entry to the school while wearing a veil and teachers failing to intervene in bullying.

So…the 300 parents are Muslims? Is it taboo to say so?

The action group said it had sought the advice of a legal team, and was pushing the Department for Education (DfE) to launch another review, but was committed to working with the school.

“We want to work with the school, not against it, but at the moment what they’re doing feels like a tick-box exercise,” a representative said. “We want some real accountability. We got a report, but we still feel like nothing is happening. They say they’re engaging, but nobody is believing that engagement.

“We just want parents to be heard, and students to be safe and have their faith respected.”

Oh their faith. They want their faith to be respected. Well why didn’t you say so?

It really is odd to write a story of this kind so very vaguely. If you have to be that vague maybe just don’t report it at all.

Qureshi said although the clips posted on social media showed only a snippet of his two hours in the classroom, which also included some reasonable debate with pupils, he had found the incident distressing.

“I know that they are young people, and young people do have questions, but it was the element of hostility that bothered me,” he said.

He said he had received death threats and online abuse when the clips went viral on TikTok, but had received no “formal apology from the school itself or any support” and the external report, which he was not consulted on, had made for difficult reading.

“It did lay the blame with the school and the teachers more than anything, and I’m not sure that’s helpful,” he said. “To me it’s quite worrying that the mindset of my childhood in the 70s and 80s, that you cannot be gay Muslim, continues here in the 21st century in the UK.”

And you can’t even get honest reporting on it from the Guardian.

In the video clips of the incident, pupils can be heard saying Qureshi was “advocating the wrong thing” and asking him: “Do you agree that being gay and Muslim is wrong?”

In a separate clip, a teacher can be seen telling students: “I’ve had enough. We live in a diverse and tolerant country. Twenty-one years ago a group of Muslims smashed airplanes into buildings to kill thousands of people. At that stage people stood up and said we should not condemn Muslims for what a few have done, because we are a tolerant society.”

He went on to say that if the students “cannot live with the ethos of the school”, which is to “allow people to live the way they want”, then they could attend a faith school instead.

Finally we get a clearer picture. The school is not a “faith school” and there was a clash between faithy students and secular teachers.

A spokesperson for the school said pupils were taught “the fundamental British values of democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty, and mutual respect and tolerance of those with different faiths and beliefs. We promote equality of opportunity and diversity effectively”.

“However, we accept that we did not get it right on this occasion. That is why we initiated an external and independent investigation into this incident and why we have apologised for the upset caused. We repeat that apology today.”

Maybe it can’t be done. Maybe it’s not possible to teach fundamental values of mutual respect and tolerance while also avoiding all subjects that could “cause upset” to religious believers.

Another consignment of “Why can’t you just support trans rights, why are you so cruelly opposed to trans rights, all the good people are for trans rights, you are such a demonic enemy of trans rights” without any pesky detail about what actual rights they’re talking about. Like…

Wonderful you, you’re so empathy, you’re so kind with your so sorry and your sad emoji, but what exactly are the trans rights you’re defending? Also: nobody says trans people “shouldn’t exist.” That’s a stupid but all the more effective lie. The issue is not existence, the issue is fake idenniny and encroachment on the rights and protections of other people – to be exact, of women.

What does “apparently” mean there? In your head, yes? Because of course women who object to men in women’s spaces of course are interested in the crisis of male violence against women, including intimate partner violence or stranger violence. Very interested. That’s exactly why we don’t want men in our spaces, even if they say they are trans women. It’s not at all “apparent” that we don’t care, it’s “apparent” only to you and only in the sense that it’s the nearest insult you could find in a hurry.

Bad journalism strikes again.

The latest stop on anti-trans activist Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull’s Let Women Speak tour in Tasmania saw the self-described women’s rights activist swarmed by hundreds of protesters who drowned out the relatively small number of people who turned out in support.

The spirited response left Keen-Minshull, also known as Posie Parker, complaining about a lack of police protection and gave fuel to Kiwis hoping for a similar reaction when the tour arrives in Aotearoa this weekend.

Keen-Minshull has widely criticised policies that support the transgender community and has been labelled as an anti-trans activist.

In the first paragraph the New Zealand Herald calls her “the self-described women’s rights activist” and in the third it says she “has been labelled as an anti-trans activist.” She can’t win, can she. If she says what she is the Herald sneers at her, but the Herald is fully entitled to tell us she’s “been labeled” as a demon.

The Mercury reported that around 40 anti-transgender activists from Let Women Speak attempted to hold their rally yesterday outside Hobart’s State Parliament building, but were outnumbered ten-to-one by counter-protestors, who pushed the smaller group back onto the steps of parliament and chanted over their attempts to speak, leaving them effectively surrounded.

Shorter: counter-protesters outnumbered and bullied the Let Women Speak protesters, thus rendering them unable to speak. The Herald implies this is a good thing.

Isla McGregor from Let Women Speak Tasmania told The Mercury that organisers had contacted Minister for Police, Fire and Emergency Services Felix Ellis to complain of “severe bullying, harrassment, noise abuse, and being spat on.

“Many protesters begged members of Tasmania Police to protect them. They refused,” she said.

In other words no, don’t let women speak; make sure they can’t speak. Women don’t matter.

Stop women speaking.

I trust you’re as prurient as I am and are wondering what Trump said about DeSantis when he popped like popcorn yesterday. I have ascertained what it was that he said. It’s a classic of trumpery.

Breaking his silence on Donald Trump’s legal troubles, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Monday criticized the Manhattan district attorney who is pursuing charges against the former president and vowed his office would not be involved if the matter trickles into Trump’s adopted home state.

But DeSantis, a rising rival for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, stopped well short of offering support for the former president and instead seemed to poke fun at the situation Trump has found himself in as he attempts a political comeback and a third campaign for the White House. A grand jury is in the final stages of determining whether Trump should face charges over an alleged payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels related to a supposed affair.

“I don’t know what goes into paying hush money to a porn star to secure silence over some type of alleged affair,” DeSantis said as laughter broke out at a news conference in Panama City, Florida. “I just, I can’t speak to that.”

Laughter!! How could they laugh?!! This must not go unavenged.

The dismissive quips traveled quickly across the state to Mar-a-Lago, where Trump has decamped while he awaits for word on the New York grand jury’s findings. His allies immediately started attacking DeSantis across social media, suggesting he would face a political price for failing to recognize Republicans are rallying around Trump amid his mounting legal threats.

Trump responded in a statement posted to his social media site, Truth Social, leveling a series of personal attacks against DeSantis.

“Ron DeSanctimonious will probably find out about FALSE ACCUSATIONS & FAKE STORIES sometime in the future, as he gets older, wiser, and better known, when he’s unfairly and illegally attacked by a woman, even classmates that are ‘underage’ (or possibly a man!). I’m sure he will want to fight these misfits just like I do!” Trump wrote.

That’s dignified! That’s not childish at all! That doesn’t sound a bit like a nine-year-old boy losing his temper at snack time.

Kevin McCarthy is kind of tired of all this law enforcement nonsense.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) on Tuesday sought to downplay the legal case related to a hush-money payment by former president Donald Trump to an adult-film actress, saying it involved “personal money” and shouldn’t be able to be prosecuted under the statute of limitations.

“I think you know in your heart of hearts that this is just political,” McCarthy told reporters at a House Republican retreat in Orlando. “And I think that’s what the rest of the country thinks. And we’re kind of tired of that.”

The rest of the country? All of it? Nah, bub, what many of the rest of the country thinks is that it’s tragic and pathetic that this awful, empty, crooked, trashy man was ever president. That’s what we think.

Trump is popping like a whole bushel of popcorn these days.

Donald Trump’s Republican allies in the House are doing what the former president taught them to do – use government power to try to keep his legal threats at bay.

That’s what Congress is for, right? Shielding a corrupt criminal ex-president from the long arm of the law?

Trump’s calls for protests, meanwhile, have authorities on edge in New York, where security cameras and barricades have been erected, and in Washington amid painful flashbacks to his incitement of violence to further his personal and political ends on January 6, 2021.

…

And an ugly spat broke out between Trump and his potential top rival in the GOP nominating race, Ron DeSantis. The Florida governor took a jab at his one-time mentor by suggesting he didn’t know anything about “paying hush money to a porn star to secure silence over some type of alleged affair,” while also condemning what he said were political prosecutions. Trump responded with a vicious counter-attack full of unsubstantiated innuendo about his rival’s private life, which previewed a potentially nasty GOP primary campaign and hinted at the ex-president’s fury over what he sees as disloyalty from DeSantis.

Well that’s attractive. How pleasant it is being saddled with an ex-president who carries on like the cheapest of cheap mobsters in a movie about cheap mobsters.

The witch trial of Moira Deeming continues.

Liberal divisions over a bid to expel Victorian MP Moira Deeming from the party room are expected to deepen, despite leader John Pesutto claiming an early victory after an attempt to delay a vote over her future failed.

Liberal MPs will decide early next week whether Deeming should be expelled from the parliamentary party, after she attended a rally headlined by British anti-transgender activist Kellie-Jay Keen where neo-Nazis were photographed performing the Nazi salute at the weekend.

Deeming has vowed to fight the expulsion and says she has done nothing wrong.

How dare she, right? Saying she’s done nothing wrong by attending a feminist rally! She must be a witch!

Pesutto’s letter of motion, addressed to Deeming, was publicly released on Tuesday morning, outlining the allegations she “conducted activities in a manner likely to bring discredit on the Parliament or the Parliamentary Party”.

He alleges Deeming attended the rally despite Keen being “known to be publicly associated with far right-wing extremist groups including neo-Nazi activist”.

“Known” by whom? What does “associated with” mean?

From what I can tell she’s accused of consorting with demons because the demons show up at her rallies and she doesn’t magic them away. An accusation is not a conviction. I suspect the accusers just want to shut her down, and accusations of consorting are an easy path to that goal.

The London police force is a mess.

The Metropolitan police is broken and rotten, suffering collapsing public trust and is guilty of institutional racism, misogyny and homophobia, an official report has said.

…

The 363-page report details disturbing stories of sexual assaults, usually covered up or downplayed, with 12% of women in the Met saying they had been harassed or attacked at work, and one-third experiencing sexism.

…

The report found a bullying culture, frontline officers demoralised and feeling let down by their leaders, and discrimination “baked into the system”.

But the people in charge are pushing back.

Sir Mark Rowley, the force’s commissioner since September, said he would not use the labels of institutionally racist, institutionally misogynistic and institutionally homophobic that Casey insisted Britain’s biggest force deserved.

Attaboy! You tell those politically correct inspectors where to go.

Rowley said he wanted more time to study Casey’s recommendations, but said he accepts the findings. He said he accepted Casey’s factual findings about racism, misogyny and homophobia in his organisation and they were systemic, but neither he nor the Met would accept they were “institutional”, claiming it was a political term.

Hey, you know what else is a political term? “Police.” Of course it’s political, because the whole thing is political. What else would it be?

The current Home Office is opposed to the idea of institutional racism.

The Tory Home Office that is.

Until now, Rowley has generated a small degree of hope with his vows to reform, but Andy George, the chair of the National Black Police Association, said: “The commissioner is wrong to once again fail to accept the Met is institutionally racist. We risk repeating history and cannot let this moment pass as another missed opportunity.”

The Guardian gives the last word to Harriet Wistrich.

Harriet Wistrich, of the Centre for Women’s Justice, said Casey’s findings were “without precedent in its unswerving criticism of a corrupt, institutionally racist, misogynistic and homophobic police force”.

She said the two government inquiries after the Couzens scandal should be given greater powers and placed on statutory footing.

Because of the institutional racism and misogyny.

The BBC’s environment correspondent on the new IPCC study:

“The message in terms of urgency, I think, is stop burning fossil fuels as fast as humanly possible,” Dr Friederike Otto, one of the report’s authors told BBC News.

“It is not because we are lacking some important piece of technology or some important knowledge. It is because so far, the sense of urgency has been lacking in the places where the important decisions are made.”

It’s because we live in the present, and the people who run things can’t or won’t change the way we live. Planes gotta keep flying, cars gotta keep rolling off the assembly lines, oil gotta keep being pumped out.

While it is easy to think that scientific reports on climate change are all about governments and energy policy, the IPCC has been moving to highlight the fact that the actions that people can take make by themselves make massive difference to the overall picture.

But if governments and corporations don’t change what they’re doing how are people by themselves supposed to be motivated to take action? What’s the point of deciding not to take that flight when everyone else is still taking that flight?

Huge supportive crowds outside Trump Tower today.