Hmmmm.

An elderly man spotted wearing a girl’s school uniform near a Leigh secondary school and on a bus “does not pose a risk”, according to police who have urged the public to stop sharing photos of him.

Social media has been flooded with reports of the man wearing Belfairs Academy uniform in the vicinity of the Highlands Boulevard school this week, as well as on a bus in the area while children travelled home. 

Photos have also been posted online of the man wearing a Milton Hall Primary School uniform.

Photos not of this man wearing girls’ school uniforms at home, mind you, but wearing them in public while loitering near the schools and riding the bus the girls take.

How can the police know the man poses no risk?

Essex Police has identified the individual and officers from its community policing team have discussed the incident with the man in question. The force says it understands the community’s concerns, but the man is not a risk to the public.

But the force can’t know that. It can think it has good reasons to think he is not a risk, but it can’t just know he isn’t full stop. It can’t know that, and the behavior in question sounds quite strikingly diagnostic of “this man is a risk to these girls.” Why is he not dressing up in boys’ school uniforms, just for a start?

Police have also urged residents to stop sharing photographs of the individual on social media. Posts shared on Facebook identifying the man have attracted hundreds of comments and shares.

The police not only think and say they know what they can’t know, they’re also ordering people to stop taking precautions against this man loitering around schoolgirls in schoolgirls’ uniforms.

Bosses at Essex Police have reiterated that no crimes had been committed and that the force has the situation under control.

School uniform supplier Paul’s School and Workwear in Southchurch Road says it has received multiple emails and calls regarding the individual. In a post on Facebook, a spokesman for the business said it had not sold him the Belfairs uniform but added: “He was in store this week purchasing a grey box pleat skirt that he said was for his granddaughter, he is now banned from the shop.”

Oh but why is he banned from the shop? The police assure us he poses no threat. Perhaps his granddaughter would like more box pleat skirts.

A bit of good news at last:

Former president Donald Trump and his lawyer, Alina Habba, have been fined almost $1 million by a federal judge in Florida for what was ruled a frivolous lawsuit brought against his 2016 presidential rival Hillary Clinton and others.

Trump is a “prolific and sophisticated litigant who is repeatedly using the courts to seek revenge on political adversaries,” wrote U.S. District Judge Donald M. Middlebrooks in his searing 46-page judgment published late Thursday.

“He is the mastermind of strategic abuse of the judicial process, and he cannot be seen as a litigant blindly following the advice of a lawyer. He knew full well the impact of his actions,” said Middlebrooks. “As such, I find that sanctions should be imposed upon Mr. Trump and his lead counsel, Ms. Habba.”

…

“Here, we are confronted with a lawsuit that should never have been filed, which was completely frivolous, both factually and legally, and which was brought in bad faith for an improper purpose,” Middlebrooks wrote, decrying what he called “abusive litigation tactics.”

In a blistering judgment he said the case was “intended for a political purpose” and showed a “continuing pattern of misuse of the courts by Mr. Trump and his lawyers,” undermining the rule of law and diverting resources. “No reasonable lawyer would have filed it,” he added.

…

Along with former secretary of state Clinton, Judge Middlebrooks said 30 individuals and entities were “needlessly harmed” by the case in a bid to “advance a political narrative.” Among them were former FBI director James B. Comey, the Democratic National Committee and Christopher Steele, a former British spy hired by an opposition research firm working for the Clinton campaign who compiled a now-infamous dossier alleging ties between Trump and Russia.

Middlebrooks described the legal complaint as “a hodgepodge of disconnected, often immaterial events, followed by an implausible conclusion.” One example he cited was thealleged collusion between Comey and Clinton, a claim he said not only lacked substance, but was“categorically absurd” given the impact Comey’s announcements about the investigation into Clinton’s emails had on her 2016 campaign.

The final paragraph is the cherry on the sundae.

The judgment also referenced Trump’s other lawsuits, saying they demonstrated “a pattern of abuse of the courts.” Among them were legal complaints against Twitter, CNN, New York Attorney General Letitia James and the Pulitzer Prize board for a 2018 award given jointly to The Post and the New York Times for coverage of alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Hahaha he tried to sue the Pulitzer Prize.

Priyamvada Gopal outdoes herself again.

Caste?????

Wait there’s more –

“Islamophobia” in this context means skeptical or critical of theocratic Islam.

And “dominant caste Hindu background” is a snide (worse than snide) hint that Sonia Sodha is an ally of Modi and his Hindutva goals. It’s outrageous.

Dr Em at Wings Over Scotland last year on Why woke blokes abuse women:

The woke bloke contempt for women is clear, and abusive behaviours are on full display. Reading through Lundy Bancroft’s pivotal work “Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men”, the full cast of characters is present on Twitter, in the news and in our political parties and institutions.

…

Bancroft’s work, sometimes criticised for being too inclusive and easily applied to any man, is corroborated by what women know personally from relationships with abusive men, the patterns we recognise and which are analysed by domestic violence charities such as Refuge and charities attempting to end violence against women such as Nia. We are currently watching the microcosm of male abuse go macro.

Bancroft convincingly argues that it is values which cause abuse not personality, or mental disorders, or a childhood history of abuse, or alcohol or drugs. Those factors only exacerbate an existing problem – the value system of the man – and can make him more dangerous. [2]

We’re trained early to think that values don’t make anything happen – that it’s all class or libido or The Unconscious. It’s widely considered naive to think superstructure-type items like beliefs and ideas and values can drive behavior. It’s encouraging to see a professional in the field saying yes they can.

He also noted that ‘Their value system is unhealthy, not their psychology. Abuse tactics work well for the abuser, they get what they want most of the time’. [3]

Dr Em makes the connection:

The crossover between ‘trans rights activists’, incels and men’s rights activists has been frequently pointed out by feminists, but it is time to take a look at the supporting troupe. The bullying blue ticks, the fresh-faced student misogynists, the older self-serving politicians. Two things unite them all, and it is not a desire for social justice or a committed belief that clothes are magical and change one’s sex.

Forced teaming can only explain so much in the face of evidence, women’s concerns and the behaviour they exhibit. [4] It is in fact misogynistic values and pornography use which drive the phenomenon.

Men who bully and abuse women have dehumanised them and cannot see them as equals. Bancroft details how ‘most abusers verbally attack their partners in degrading, revolting ways. They reach for the words that they know are most disturbing to women, such as bitch, whore, and cunt, often preceded by the word fat. These words assault her humanity, reducing her to… a non-living object, or a degraded sexual body part’.

“Terf” is the new “cunt.”

At long last, Willoughby, have you no shame?

The “trans community” is not, repeat not, being subject to anything resembling what Jewish people were, and Willoughby of course knows that perfectly well. He didn’t say “Holocaust” or “genocide” or “8 million” but he invoked it with “state demonisation and stripping of rights.” Sleazy dirty creepy deniability.

Why isn’t it more obvious to more people that this kind of ludicrous and wildly offensive appropriation of actual genocide is a massive red flag? Why is the deranged hyperbole of trans activism embraced with such enthusiasm by people who only a few short years ago appeared to be adults?

He doesn’t want to use the both sexes gym, he wants to use the women’s gym. There’s no thrill in using the both sexes one, it’s only the women’s that provides the creepy invasive threatening you don’t get to say no to me vibe.

A transgender woman in Parksville is speaking out after she was allowed to sign up for a women-only gym, then later told she would only be allowed to access the co-ed gym due to the fact that she is trans.

No, due to the fact that he is male.

Brigid Klyne-Simpson says she previously had a rocky relationship with exercise because she didn’t feel comfortable going to gyms and working out with mostly men.

So the solution is for him to make women feel not comfortable.

She says she has previously worked out at co-ed gyms and never felt comfortable because it was mostly men in the facilities.

And his comfort is the only comfort that matters. One man’s comfort matters more than the comfort of a gym full of women. It could be all the women in Parksville and their comfort wouldn’t matter as much as his.

“It was important to me to be in a place that would be like explicitly accepting, like, ‘you are a woman, you’re allowed to be here,’” she said.

But he’s not a woman.

The owner of the gyms has the guts to say the same thing.

Dale Nagra, owner of Bodyworks Fitness, says Klyne-Simpson is welcome to work out at the co-ed gym but says other gym-goers at the ladieswomen-only gym may not be comfortable.

“We want them to be comfortable, but we also have to worry about the young girls that this gym is set up for and the women, and how are their parents gonna feel that they’re in there, then this person walks in with a male voice and big person,” Nagra said.

“So now you pick the comfort of the male who identifies as a woman…and then anybody can go in there saying, ‘OK, I identify as a woman, and I want to be able to go in there.’ And so, do we pick the comfort of the transgender person, and they may not be as comfortable with the co-ed gym but at least that’s an alternative, or do we pick the comfort of the young girls that are working out there that might not feel comfortable?”

Exactly. Door number two, thank you.

Klyne-Simpson says she understands some people can feel uncomfortable at first if they have never met a transgender person before.

“But all it takes is education. Once you understand trans women are women, trans men are men, non-binary people are who they say they are, it’s as simple as that,” she said. “If you still feel uncomfortable after that, that’s on you, it’s not on me. I am who I am, it’s as simple as that. I just look different. That’s all.”

All you have to do is recite the stupid mantra! Recite it, and men become women! It’s magic!

Kelli Paddon, B.C.’s parliamentary secretary for gender equity says situations like this highlight that it is important to continue working to advance transgender people’s rights.

“Trans people deserve to feel safe, welcome and affirmed for who they are. Trans women are women – period,” Paddon said in a statement to CHEK News. “At a time when trans people are under increased attack around the world, it’s up to all of us to speak out and to help break down barriers that transgender people face.”

Not the ones that protect women. Leave those barriers alone. Women are under attack around the world too, and there are vastly more of us. Trans women are a niche “demographic” and they demand “rights” that aren’t rights.

The Chronicle of Higher Education discussed the Hamline issue last week.

Hamline administrators, who have previously shared information mostly through written statements, granted an interview to The Chronicle. In it they defended their handling of the controversy, in which Erika López Prater, the lecturer, saw her contract go unrenewed after the course ended.

The CHE is reminding us that non-renewal of an adjunct’s contract is different from firing, because adjuncts are always subject to non-renewal of contract – they don’t have tenure. It’s a well known academic scandal that colleges and universities take advantage of that difference more and more, because it’s so much cheaper and more convenient for them.

Hamline administrators told The Chronicle on Friday that what happened in the art-history class, and their view of teaching depictions of the Prophet Muhammad, had been inaccurately reported.

But their comments raised more questions about the series of events that continues to roil the small campus.

In early October, López Prater showed two artistic depictions of the Prophet Muhammad, dating to the 14th and 16th centuries, in an online session of a class on global art history. Knowing that many Muslim people object to any visual representation of the Prophet, López Prater has said she included a warning about the images both on the course syllabus and orally in the class itself before showing the pictures.

…

But Marcela Kostihova, dean of Hamline’s College of Liberal Arts, said on Friday that was not true. “The images were already on screen from the moment that the lecture began,” she said in a video call with The Chronicle.

Sigh. You’d think they were plutonium, or a dish of Corona virus. Anyway the CHE couldn’t verify the claim.

The Chronicle provided this version of events to David Redden, a lawyer for López Prater, but neither responded in time for publication. Hamline administrators have a student’s recording of the class and cited it to support their claims about López Prater, but declined to provide a copy of it to The Chronicle.

Why?

The Oracle, Hamline’s student newspaper, obtained a video of the same class last year, but appeared to differ in reporting what it showed: “The professor gives a content warning and describes the nature of the depictions to be shown and reflects on their controversial nature for more than two minutes before advancing to the slides in question.”

So is Hamline just lying to the CHE? I don’t know.

Miller and other administrators have said plainly that they disagree with how López Prater handled the class. Miller was one signer on an email that said “respect for the observant Muslim students in that classroom should have superseded academic freedom.”

Where does that end? Should respect for religious students supersede the teaching of biology, astronomy, physics? Most learning and scholarship is a rival to the core teachings of religions, so where do universities draw the line? These are two warring epistemologies, and the differences are too basic to be resolved. Religions are free to just make shit up, and then declare it to the followers without any form of evidence or argument or other reason to believe it. Secular knowledge, not so much. If secular universities decide that religion gets to silence all claims it doesn’t like, secular universities might as well pack up and go home.

The Washington Post tells us Erika López Prater is suing Hamline.

On Tuesday, attorneys for the professor, Erika López Prater, served Hamline with a lawsuit that, among other claims, alleges religious discrimination and defamation by the school. López Prater, through her lawyer, and Hamline University declined to comment on the lawsuit Wednesday.

The religious discrimination issue is interesting. It is religious discrimination to punish people for not obeying the orders or rules of a religion. It’s religious discrimination to act as if one’s own religion is binding on everyone else.

At a news conference on Jan. 11, CAIR’s local Minnesota chapter described the incident at Hamline as Islamophobic.

The chapter’s executive director, Jaylani Hussein, said that showing images of the prophet Muhammad is offensive and that most Muslims around the world oppose public display of the prophet’s images.

That right there – that way of thinking. That’s all wrong. People can oppose public display of whatever they like, but that doesn’t mean we all have to pay attention to their opposition. I’m betting Jaylani Hussein thinks it does mean that.

Religions shouldn’t have a Right to Censor that applies “around the world” and without question. Religions are not the boss of us.

Minnesota law appears to take the same view.

López Prater names the trustees of Hamline University in her lawsuit and alleges, among other claims, religious discrimination under Minnesota’s Human Rights Law as well as defamation.

Redden said state law protects employees whose employment suffers from not conforming to the employer’s religious preferences, or if the employee “doesn’t comply with the religious-based discriminatory preferences of their customers.” In Hamlin’s case, the customers are the students.

And the students don’t have a right to veto classroom content on religious grounds.

A senior and the president of Hamline University’s Muslim Student Association (MSA), Aram Wedatalla, was in the online class when the photos were shared, according to the Hamline Oracle.

“I’m like, ‘this can’t be real,’” Wedatalla told the Oracle. “As a Muslim, and a Black person, I don’t feel like I belong, and I don’t think I’ll ever belong in a community where they don’t value me as a member, and they don’t show the same respect that I show them.”

Bollocks. What respect does she show them that corresponds to her censorship of an art history class? How is it respect to force her religious taboo on all the students in that class? Especially when López Prater warned the class in advance and said students who didn’t want to see the images of Mo could step outside? Wedatalla could have stepped out but didn’t, so clearly she wanted to force the taboo on the entire class. I don’t call that “respect.”

H/t Sackbut

Facebook showed me a sponsored promotion of a conference at Radcliffe (I bet even Facebook doesn’t know my sister was a Cliffy) titled The Age of Roe: The Past, Present, and Future of Abortion in America. Hm, thought I, I wonder if they managed to tell us about the conference without ever saying “women” so I took a look.

Finding:

Of course they did. How? Like so:

Harvard Radcliffe Institute will hold a major public conference January 26–27, 2023, to probe the complex and unpredictable ways that Roe v. Wade and its aftermath shaped the United States and the world beyond it for nearly half a century. The existential issue of abortion—and the galvanizing impact of Roe in particular—transformed the nation’s politics and public policy and its social movement energies, as well as the operations of the courtroom and the clinic. 

In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, eminent thinkers will gather as a diverse group, along many axes of difference, neither to praise Roe nor to bury it. Focusing on five major themes—voices from the front lines, international contexts, race and class, American public life, and visions of the future—a broad array of scholars, clinicians, and activists will engage in searching, interdisciplinary discussions to anatomize Roe’s impacts, including in the post-Dobbs landscape.

That’s how. Just ignore women entirely, as if abortion had nothing to do with them. Mention race and class but ignore sex altogether. Mention Roe’s impacts, but not its impacts on women. Be very very very careful never to mention the word “women” at all. [It does appear in the title of the ruling, but that they have no control over.]

Unbelievable.

The BBC on Lloyd Russell-Moyle’s bullying:

In the Commons on Tuesday, Lloyd Russell-Moyle accused Tory Miriam Cates of making “transphobic” comments.

Shouting, with features contorted by rage.

[Cates] said the proposed changes would make it “vastly easier for a predator to get access to children, to change their sex, to change their gender, with an eye to exploiting loopholes of accessing children and women in particular”.

In response, Mr Russell-Moyle, who was the next speaker, told the Commons: “Goodness me, that speech was probably one of the worst transphobic, dog-whistle speeches that I have heard in an awful long time. The idea of linking trans people with predators, frankly, is disgusting and you should be ashamed.”

He said the first sentence angrily. He shouted the second sentence with face-contorting rage. When men do this to women it’s intimidation, even if it’s in a situation where they’re very unlikely to start throwing punches. The shouts and the contorted face are signals, and they operate below the level of the literal verbal content. They’re signals of imminent violence, and they are frightening to women on a very basic level. Many many men act as if they have no idea this is true. They should figure it out.

Lloyd Russell-Moyle MP does a classic “that bitch made me do it” pretend apology:

“Passion and anger” because a woman thinks women should continue to have single-sex spaces. Male MP can’t control his rage when a female MP seeks to protect women’s rights.

He limited replies to people he follows, but there are many angry quote-tweets.

More from the “people in Arizona don’t seem to grasp what an arid climate is” department:

Rio Verde Foothills, a suburb of Scottsdale, was cut off from the city’s water supply on 1 January. The controversial move left hundreds without access to running water, prompting residents to file a lawsuit demanding that services be restored.

Scottsdale argues that it bears no responsibility for Rio Verde. In a statement published on 16 January, the city of Scottsdale said that it had for years “warned and advised” Rio Verde – which is governed by nearby Maricopa County – that it could not depend on the city’s water supply, particularly during periods of drought.

Yes but the people in Rio Verde really need water.

A lawsuit filed on behalf of residents last week claims that Scottsdale has placed Rio Verde residents under an “unconscionable amount of stress and anxiety by discontinuing their domestic water supply”.

Except it’s not “theirs,” is it.

“The lack of fresh potable water for families to be able to bathe themselves or running water to flush their toilets is a well-known basic necessity,” the lawsuit added.

Of course it is, which is why people should stop moving to desert towns. It’s not why people should move to desert towns and then demand that others supply them with water.

Arizona is one of 33 US states currently experiencing drought conditions, according to the US Drought Monitor.

Oh, only 33 out of 50. We’ll be fine.

Well that god sure as hell hates women.

A man who beheaded his 17-year-old wife has been sentenced to eight years in prison in Iran, the judiciary says.

Images of Sajjad Heydari carrying Mona’s severed head in Ahvaz after the so-called “honour killing” last year caused widespread outrage.

Nah it’s fine. Women have to be disciplined.

Mona had been married to her husband since the age of 12 and had given birth to their son when she was only 14.

That is, Mona was given to a man like so much livestock when she was 12 years old.

Local media reported that she had fled to Turkey after allegedly being subjected to domestic violence by her husband, who had refused her requests for a divorce.

So her husband hastened to demonstrate his complete innocence of domestic violence by cutting her head off.

In 2020, there was similar outrage after 14-year-old Romina Ashrafi was beheaded by her father after she reportedly ran away from home with her boyfriend. The father, who had consulted a lawyer to find out what punishment he could face for the crime before he killed her, was sentenced to nine years in prison – one less than the maximum allowed under the law.

If only she had thought to identify as a boy.

Originally a comment by tigger_the_wing on Not equal treatment but elevated status.

As I was reading this, I was simultaneously engaged in a territorial dispute with my cat. Wherever I made room for him on my bed, he kept trying to lie on my shins. No amount of moving him, moving my legs, pleading with him that other parts of the bed are more comfortable, or explaining that he can’t lie on my legs because it hurts me was going to dissuade him from trying, because he’s a cat, and lying on my legs was the point. He’s intellectually incapable of understanding anything more complex than “I want to lie there, because that’s warm.” My legs radiate heat; wherever I put them, that’s going to become, immediately, the warmest part of the bed. Eventually I won, because I simply kept moving him until he gave up and ceded to my superior strength and stubbornness (anyone who thinks that it’s not possible to out-stubborn a cat hasn’t met a crippled old lady who has lived with cats for decades). He’s now asleep on my bed, next to my legs, with his back towards me; the classic “I’m upset with you, but I need your heat” cat sulking pose.

This is a daily tussle. Again, the salient point is he’s a cat; like a human toddler, he’s incapable of the higher-order thinking required for him to be able to rank competing needs or have the necessary empathy to put another animal’s greater needs above his own lesser needs, or even wants. Most of the time he lives entirely in the moment, and right at that moment he wants that heat. I win because, eventually, his need for sleep overrides his ability to keep arguing; he’ll have forgotten all about it when he wakes up, and I’ll have to go through it again (until I get him his own hot water bottle?). Perhaps the only reasons I always won arguments with my toddlers were my greater stamina and their short memories.

Anyway, these TRAs are grown men behaving like cats or toddlers. Unlike cats or toddlers, however, they don’t have the excuse of a lack of intellectual ability; they’ve actively decided to ignore the civilised part of their brain in order to demand that we give in to their wants, overriding everyone else’s needs. No amount of looking for any extra needs they may have, and catering to them, will make the slightest bit of difference because their actual needs are already being met.

“You want that space, I want that space; I’m more important than you, so let me have it.

What do you mean, you need that space? In that case, I need it, too. So let me have it. I’m me, so I’m always the most important person to me, so anything I want takes precedence over everything else.”

The only way we can win against such an attitude is to out-stubborn it. Pleading is a waste of breath (I only do it with the cat to appease my own conscience, because I am civilised; it makes exactly zero difference to him). Unfortunately, far too many people have been attempting to appease it, instead, so we are now at a much greater disadvantage than we would have been, say, fifty years ago had we listened to lesbians who were already attempting to warn people about what such men were doing to their community.

An academic paper from 2013:

Boycunts and Bonus Holes: Trans Men’s Bodies, Neoliberalism, and the Sexual Productivity of Genitals

One author is an anthropologist, the other is a linguist.

You want to read the abstract, right? Of course you do.

Recent theorizations of trans embodiment have brought attention to the ways neoliberalism limits the productivity of nonnormatively gendered bodies. This article deals with the discursive framing of embodiment and sexual desirability among trans men and other transmasculine persons negotiating Internet-mediated homoerotic spaces. Micro-level analysis of discourse structure and macro-level analysis of socio-political context together show how trans men navigate homonormative sexual economies by linguistically recuperating their bodies’ sexually productivity. Instead of undermining claims of embodied masculinity and homoerotic value, potential sites of exclusion—i.e., trans genitals—become sites of flexible accumulation that enhance rather than detract from their bearers’ desirability.

If you say so, but do trans men really have a lot of luck on gay “dating” sites?

Argumentum ad fake comparison:

I don’t have enough eyes to roll here.

He’s trying to jostle us into thinking men like him are comparable to Black people in majority-white societies or Jewish people in Nazi Germany. They’re not. Just being an identifiable group doesn’t make that group comparable to all other groups.

But they’re a demographic you see. As long as you’re a demographic you get to claim persecution whenever someone is skeptical of your grandiose claims about yourself.

It’s literally all about the dress.

“For me it was a case of, I wanted to get married, and I didn’t want to have to, on my wedding day, write down ‘Mister Male’ on what should be [voice quavers with emotion here] one of the most feminine-feeling days of my life, getting married to the person I love….Largely a gender recognition certificate is significant for someone to be affirmed as who they are when they get married.”

Interviewer helpfully says it’s about a feeling, an identity, not about doing x y or z.

“It’s about validity, and it’s about who you are not being disregarded. It’s about, [with extra emotion, and gestures] on my wedding day, in my beautiful white dress, on this day, not having to go and write down [with burly gestures] ‘I am male!’.”

My dress, my dress! My beautiful white dress!

It doesn’t seem to occur to him that he can just wear his damn dress, without first having to drive a truck through women’s rights to do it.

Paging Moley, Moley to the red telephone.

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Twanzphobia ith a thin! with emphasis added.

“…trans people are whole and holy….Trans people are divine.

Still Orwellian; they’ve just changed texts: “Some animals are more equal than others.”

This is either a banal truism (everyone is holy, including trans people) or a claim that trans people are extra-specialer than boring old non-trans people. Just like claims to being non-binary, it’s either pointless (because nobody falls at either end of Barbie to GI Joe Gender Spectrum, meaning everyone is trivially “non-binary”), or a statement of exceptionalism, that the normal rules don’t apply to them because they’re above them. I think this claim is more the latter than the former.

This “holiness”, “divinity” (and from prior hectoring claims “sacredness”), is a claim to an elevated status, rather than a plea for equal treatment. Equal treatment is the last thing that trans activists are interested in, because equal treatment would mean that nobody would give a fuck about their precious identities, when what they insist upon is attention, submission and obedience. Not equality. What they are claiming is sainthood. Through self ID, TiMs are magically rendered harmless and blameless, no longer part of the male demographic or subject to its patterns of behaviour and offence, and, on that basis, are to be welcomed into women’s single-sex spaces. Or else. They are to be considered Pure and without Sin, perfect Angels incapable of predatory intent. Ever. They are ever and only the victims here; don’t you forget it. (They refuse to admit the possibility that baser creatures might pretend to be Angels in order to satisfy their gross appetites. Turns out it’s hard to tell the real Angels from guys wearing cheap wings on their backs, so it’s best to avoid this topic altogether, and summarily condemn as evil transphobes any and all women who bring this up. We can be thankful that their Inquisitorial aspirations are not more fully realized, empowered and enforced than they already are.) They’ve had plenty of practice claiming persecution, martyrdom and incipient genocide. They have Suffered for the Faith, bearing the vicarious, psychic wounds of Actual Violence. Nametags sporting preferred pronouns are the equivalent of the halos in Western paintings of Holy People; we are supposed to abase ourselves as unworthy sinners in the presence of these Divine Beings.

The BBC live-reported on the gender battles among MPs today and yesterday.

Today it included a chat it had with a person of gender:

The BBC has spoken to a genderfluid, trans woman who is not yet out to family and close friends.

What does that even mean? How can you be “genderfluid” and “trans”? Being trans means you’re so convinced you’re the opposite sex that you officially declare yourself as such. Genderfluid is the opposite of that.

They said: “It is unlikely that I will personally be in a position to apply for a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC) even if England were to relax the process.

“However, I do rely on the protections of the Equality Act and I am really concerned that this government will seek to row back on protections, particularly for trans people.

“We are a small part of the community, at high risk of abuse and it seems that the profile given to us far outweighs any risk to society and in particular cis women’s rights.

Yeah. In particular cis women’s rights – those stupid backward tame boring women who were just born that way don’t matter enough for their rights to matter. Yawn. Those women are particularly worthless and trivial.

The trans woman went on to explain: “How often do we show our birth certificate? As I understand it with a GRC you can change tax records, get married in the correct gene lsic] and be buried as such, but it has nothing to do with toilets.”

He’s “genderfluid” but he’s also a trans woman. Make it make sense.

The Beeb also includes the bit where Lloyd Russell-Moyle decided to shout at a woman.

Things are getting heated in the Commons chamber, with Labour’s Lloyd Russell-Moyle describing remarks by Conservative MP Miriam Cates as “one of the worst transphobic, dog-whistle speeches that I have heard in an awful long time”.

“Describing” in a furious testosteroney shout.

Cates had said there was a risk of “predators” exploiting the bill “to get access to children”, comments that Russell-Moyle described as “disgusting”, and said Cates should be “ashamed” of.

But how is there not such a risk? How exactly would it be done away with? Why wouldn’t men who want to fiddle with children exploit gender performance to get easier access? Please explain.