The Times on The Heresy:

Rosie Duffield and JK Rowling…were threatened with murder by a man for daring to dispute the transparent absurdities of the extreme trans lobby, and championing the right of women to enjoy female-only spaces free of men who identify as women. Like Galileo before them, the two women prefer science to “luxury beliefs” as a guide to truth. They happen to share the view that some things just are, and whether or not people like them is neither here nor there.

We all (we heretics) share the view that like and dislike have no power to change reality (except in the very narrow sense of changing our feelings about reality). Normally adults are well aware of this. We can’t make it start raining with the power of thought, we can’t wish the planet into escaping climate change, we can’t resurrect the dead, we can’t reverse crop failures, we can’t go for a stroll on Mars. We know that. Yet somehow this one thing has become an exception to the broad general reality. Why? I have yet to see any convincing explanation.

In 2021 Rosie pointed out that only women have a cervix.

Twenty years ago, no one would have raised an eyebrow at this statement of the blindingly obvious. Yet her party leader, Sir Keir Starmer, reacted to her comment with condemnation. It was, he remarked, “something that shouldn’t be said”. Now, at last, Sir Keir appears to have rediscovered his notes from O-level biology. After taking a lesson from his mentor Sir Tony Blair, who appears to be clearer on the basics, Sir Keir now says women have vaginas and men penises.

Well, to be really exact, he says he agrees with Tony Blair that women have vaginas and men penises. I’m not sure we know he would say that without the Tony Blair intro.

This is an encouraging evidence-based statement from a former practising barrister and director of public prosecutions whose professional currency was indeed evidence. Sir Keir’s Damascene conversion — he once said only 99.9 per cent of women do not have penises — was made during an election debate on Thursday. Asked about why he reprimanded Ms Duffield for her cervix comment, he attempted to use context: it was, he said, “a very toxic, very divided” time.

Yeah, dude, and you jumped for the wrong side, and hung Rosie out to dry, and treated women’s rights as so much dandruff to be brushed off your shoulders. It was and still is a very fucking toxic time for women, and you are no help whatsoever.

I will never understand why they don’t see the absurdity of this. Throw half of humanity – some four billion people – overboard for the sake of a tiny minority of trend-hugging men who claim to be women? Why would any politician make such a grotesque calculation?

Man awarded $35,000 Canadian because a salon refused to wax his legs.

The Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario (HRTO) has awarded $35,000 in damages to an Indigenous transgender woman who was refused a leg wax at a salon in Windsor six years ago. However, the owner of the salon is challenging the ruling, which his lawyer calls “deeply flawed.”

The decision comes six years after the woman contacted Mad Wax Windsor Inc. by phone to book an appointment. She alleged there was a string of discriminatory and retaliatory behaviour by the salon and owner Jason Carruthers. 

…

In their phone call, the woman testified, Carruthers told her there was no one on staff who would be comfortable providing services to “someone like you.” Carruthers denied using that phrase or misgendering A.B., but said he didn’t have a staff member who could provide “male waxing services.”

I have to admit I know nothing about “waxing services”…but I’m guessing the issue was that the staff was female and they were suspicious of his motivation. I can hear it now – “Oh no dear, all the way up.”

The HRTO ordered Carruthers, the salon and another business to pay $35,000 in damages to A.B., plus interest, and that both Carruthers and salon staff undertake online human rights training.

Why? It’s not a “human right” to get someone to pour hot wax on your legs and then pull it off.

In welcoming the tribunal’s decision, A.B. said no one can silence her or the facts laid out by the tribunal. “This decision brings me some peace,” she said in a media release. “It helps tell the story of the discrimination I faced and the steps taken to escalate that discrimination and harassment against me.”

And the CBC reports all this ridiculous nonsense as if it were true and reasonable. Pathetic.

As long as I’m on the subject…exploring the Texas ACLU Facebook led me to the page of The Lilith Fund for Reproductive Equity. Guess what: they too refuse to say “women.” (And what tf is reproductive equity?) It’s all people who are pregnant, abortion care for Texans, yadda yadda. “Women” is a filthy word and absolutely must never be used under any circumstances.

It’s been two years since Roe v. Wade was overturned, forever changing the landscape of reproductive and constitutional rights. Despite the challenges and ongoing attacks on abortion access, we’ve persevered and continue to show up for Texan abortion seekers. Thanks to your unwavering support, we’ve expanded our reach and are helping more people than ever before, and we continue the fight towards abortion access for all.

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Each of our clients receives all of our effort and love to help them have access to abortion and other reproductive services they need. No questions, no fear, and no stigma. Our heart is always with you guys.

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We fund abortions for Texans in states where abortion is legal. We can also help you pay for ultrasounds, contraception, and other reproductive healthcare.

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This Pride Month, let’s remember that reproductive justice and queer liberation are inseparable.

Everyone deserves access to abortion and comprehensive healthcare, including queer and trans folks.

​​Pride isn’t just a celebration—it’s a call for liberation. There is no reproductive justice without the liberation of all our queer friends and family, and there is no pride without global liberation.

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We’re thrilled to announce that our final Fund-a-Thon total is $106,630!

All money raised from Fund-a-Thon goes towards the cost of abortions for Texans who are forced to travel to other states for their care. With our trusted partner clinics in Texas, we are also funding other reproductive care like ultrasounds, contraception, counseling, trans care, and more.

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It’s a universal rule.

ACLU Texas’s Facebook page is interesting – it talks about immigrants, LGBTQIA+ Texans, people, lives, abortion, reproductive healthcare decisions, migrants, racial profiling, abortion access, abortion care, pregnant people, Pride, the First Amendment, a drag artist, asylum, library books that “center Black, Brown, and LGBTQIA+ stories” – and so on, but there is one subject, one cause, one set of people it just doesn’t name.

And we all know damn well what it is.

Filthy women-hating ACLU.

It doesn’t “include everyone”; that’s meaningless.

Women have historically been the Other sex, the inferior sex, the weaker sex, the stupid sex, the timid sex, the dirty sex, the whorey sex. The point of Title IX was to get rid of that age-old inferior status. It was not to pamper men who like to wear frilly underpants.

“Including everyone” is beside the point. Laws against murder don’t “include everyone”; they make murder a crime. Not everything is or can be or should be “inclusive.”

We need a new direction. Right and left aren’t cutting it. Up? Sideways? Inside out?

Speaking of women’s rights…

The Taliban are reportedly demanding that no Afghan women be allowed to participate in the UN meeting in Doha starting 30 June, set up to discuss the international community’s approach to Afghanistan, and that women’s rights [not be] on the agenda.

And who are the Taliban? Are they all men perhaps?

The Taliban did not participate in UN talks earlier this year, with the UN chief António Guterres saying at the time that the group presented a set of conditions for its participation that “denied us the right to talk to other representatives of the Afghan society” and were “not acceptable”.

And by “other representatives” he of course meant the female half of Afghan society.

In trying to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table now, the UN was giving in to their demands to exclude women’s rights, said the former Afghan minister of women’s affairs Sima Samar.

“This situation is an indirect submission to the will of the Taliban. Law, democracy and sustainable peace are not possible without including half of the population of the society who are women.”

The war on women has so many fronts these days.

Always with the distortions and untruths.

BBC Radio 4:

The author JK Rowling has said she’ll struggle to support Labour at the General Election, accusing Sir Keir Starmer of abandoning women who are concerned about transgender rights.

What a sly invidious way of putting it. No we’re not “concerned about transgender rights.” We’re concerned about women’s rights. Transgender people should have the human rights everyone else has.

They say it not once but twice.

JK Rowling says she has been a Labour voter all her adult life but she says as long as Labour remains dismissive and often offensive towards women concerned about transgender rights, she will struggle to support the party.

This despite the fact that she explicitly said that is not what she is saying (or what we are saying). Just yesterday she said it.

More on the guest appearance of out on parole Sarah Jane Baker still busy intimidating women.

That’s the fella – red beret, sunglasses, striped top, black shorts.

He comes into view at 5 seconds, brandishing his anarchist flag on its metal pole.

It appears that team trans has succeeded in completely shutting down the Let Women Speak [note the irony] rally in Brighton.

And That Guy was there.

Tick tick tick tick

No one in r/Costco — the Reddit group dedicated to the beloved bulk store — could get over it. The hefty, store-brand olive oil bottles they had been purchasing for years, the ones they all agreed were the best and cheapest around, suddenly cost twice what they used to…No one in r/Costco — the Reddit group dedicated to the beloved bulk store — could get over it. The hefty, store-brand olive oil bottles they had been purchasing for years, the ones they all agreed were the best and cheapest around, suddenly cost twice what they used to.

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In March, a study from scientists at the European Central Bank and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research found that rising temperatures could add as much as 1.2percentage points to annual global inflation by 2035. The effects are taking shape already: Drought in Europe is devastating olive harvests.

…

Of all the goods that could be affected by climate-driven price spikes, food is among the most vulnerable, Kotz said. Plants lose more water through their leaves, stop forming flowers and fruit, and eventually are unable to perform photosynthesis. Crops, livestock and fisheries are keenly sensitive to changes in their environments. Sea creatures have been known to cook to death inheat waves.

And of all the goods that humans and all other animals depend on for survival, food is pretty god damn crucial.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — a U.N. coalition of the world’s top climate scientists — projects that disasters will increasingly strike multiple agricultural regions at the same time, creating worldwide shortages. One study found that the risk of simultaneous crop failures in major corn-growing regions could increase from a 6 percent chance per year in recent decades to 40 percent if the world warms to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial temperatures — a threshold the planet is likely to exceed within the next decade.

In other words: get ready for famine.

Chapter eleventy billion of Starmer saying his record on women’s rights is fabulous so shut up.

Keir Starmer has said he is proud of Labour’s history on women’s rights after JK Rowling said she would struggle to support the party because of its stance on transgender rights. Starmer told reporters on Saturday that he was “very proud of the progress” of past Labour governments, which made a “material difference” to women’s lives.

Yes see that’s not the issue – as of course he knows perfectly well. The issue is what he will do, and the fact that he gives every indication that he will continue to fling shit at women who refuse to agree that men can be women. We’re not asking about Labour’s past, we’re asking about Starmer’s present and future. We’re asking because he keeps throwing women to the wolves.

Writing in the Times on Saturday, Rowling, a former Labour member and donor, said she would struggle to vote for the party “as long as Labour remains dismissive and often offensive towards women fighting to retain the rights”. She said she had a “poor opinion” of Starmer’s character and claimed he was “dismissive and often offensive” of women’s concerns about sex-based rights.

…

Asked for his response to Rowling’s comments, the Labour leader said: “I do respect her, but I would point out the long record that Labour has in government of passing really important legislation which has advanced the rights of women and made a material difference.”

Again. Not the question. Never mind the record; what are you going to do?

On trans rights, he said a Labour government would seek a “reset moment where we can bring the country together and ensure that all debate is done in a respectful way”.

Ok here’s a tip: it’s not “respectful” to parry all questions, much less to reply to questions about what women say with “I agree with what Tony Blair says.”

On Saturday, when asked whether he would now apologise to Duffield, Starmer said: “I think it’s very important, in all political space, that we treat all views with respect and all people with dignity and that’s what I tried to do throughout this. I’m very proud of the progress that we’ve made as a Labour party in government in the past when it comes to women’s rights. I’m conscious that the battle for women’s rights is never over. We need to make further progress in this country.”

In other words he refused, for the billionth time, to answer.

Same old same old same old same old.

Keir Starmer has said he is proud of Labour’s history on women’s rights after JK Rowling said she would struggle to support the party because of its stance on transgender rights.

Starmer told reporters on Saturday that he was “very proud of the progress” of past Labour governments, which made a “material difference” to women’s lives.

Yes we know, and that’s not the issue. The issue is not past Labour but current Labour.

Writing in the Times on Saturday, Rowling, a former Labour member and donor, said she would struggle to vote for the party “as long as Labour remains dismissive and often offensive towards women fighting to retain the[ir] rights”. Asked for his response to Rowling’s comments, the Labour leader said: “I do respect her, but I would point out the long record that Labour has in government of passing really important legislation which has advanced the rights of women and made a material difference.”

Again: we know, but the issue is what Labour does now, and patting yourself on the back for what it did in the past is just changing the subject. If a married man starts punching his wife regularly she’s not going to be mollified by his reminding her of how nice he was to her ten years ago.

On trans rights, he said a Labour government would seek a “reset moment where we can bring the country together and ensure that all debate is done in a respectful way”.

Blah blah blah. That’s just filler. It means nothing.

On Saturday, when asked whether he would now apologise to Duffield, Starmer said: “I think it’s very important, in all political space, that we treat all views with respect and all people with dignity and that’s what I tried to do throughout this. I’m very proud of the progress that we’ve made as a Labour party in government in the past when it comes to women’s rights. I’m conscious that the battle for women’s rights is never over. We need to make further progress in this country.”

In other words no. We know. That’s the problem.

More on Starmer’s exasperated contempt for women:

Starmer has a woman problem, or more specifically, he finds the women who argue for their sex-based rights to be respected, both in law and in practice, extremely irritating. He could barely contain his exasperation during the BBC’s Question Time on Thursday when a young woman asked him about his current views on biological sex, reminding him that he had previously criticised Labour MP Rosie Duffield for stating that “only women have a cervix”. He said at the time her statement of the obvious was something that shouldn’t have been said. “It’s not right.”

It seems he has changed his mind – or has he? Adopting his best human rights lawyer pose, and with only the slightest hint of condescension in his voice, he replied: “Well look, on the biology, I agree with what Tony Blair said the other day in relation to men having penises and women having vaginas.”

I have to stop at that point, again – this time not to snarl but to laugh. Tony Blair said what??? Who ever heard of such a thing? Who knew? This changes everything!!

I mean he didn’t need Tony Blair to say it, did he. It’s not what you’d call an arcane fact. When I quoted him a day or two ago I was so annoyed I didn’t even notice the absurdity. “Tony says men have wee-wees and women have foofies!” Dude everyone says men have penises and women have vaginas. Everyone. You don’t need an authority to say it for you: it’s common knowledge. You really really don’t need MY FRIEND THE FORMER PRIME MINISTER SAYS. You don’t need to name-drop or show off or offer an imprimatur.

It’s far more disgusting than funny, but still, it is also funny.

A little happy ending story.

A pet donkey that escaped his owners five years ago in California has been found “living his best life” with a herd of wild elk. Terrie and Dave Drewry, of Auburn, are convinced the animal, filmed by a hiker earlier in June, is their pet “Diesel”.

…

Diesel was spooked and took off during a hiking trip with Mr Drewry near Clear Lake, California in 2019. Weeks of volunteer searches proved fruitless, and a trail camera image a few months later was the last time he was seen…Then hiker Max Fennell spotted the herd earlier this month, describing the donkey as “happy and healthy”, and posted his film on social media…The elk herd is a few miles away from where Diesel first went missing and in an area where there are no wild donkeys.

So that’s two good reasons to think it really is that particular donkey.

And Max Fennell got a nice letter from PETA.

Bad stupid man complains about woman having concerns he doesn’t approve of.

Bad stupid man accuses women who disagree with his bad stupid tweet of “swarming” his “mentions.” Man said a bad stupid thing and women replied. That’s not “swarming” and man’s “mentions” are not sacred ground that must be kept immaculately clean.

Hmm. Nigel Farage speaks up in defense of manly pastimes like beating up women:

Nigel Farage has praised the misogynist influencer Andrew Tate for being an “important voice” for the “emasculated” and giving boys “perhaps a bit of confidence at school” in online interviews that appear to be aimed at young men over the past year.

The Reform UK leader spoke in favour of Tate for defending “male culture” in a Strike It Big podcast that aired in February, while acknowledging that the influencer had gone “over the top” and elsewhere that he had said some “pretty horrible” things.

Good old male culture, with its mischievous delight in choking and punching and raping women.

Since December 2022, Tate has been facing charges in Romania of human trafficking, rape, and forming a criminal gang to sexually exploit women, which he denies.

Many politicians and teachers have spoken out against Tate’s influence on young boys in the UK, after the self-proclaimed misogynist said women belonged in the home and were a man’s property. “There’s no way you can be rooted in reality and not be sexist,” Tate said in one video.

So cheeky! Isn’t he delightful?

In other clips reported by the Observer, the British-American kickboxer – who poses with fast cars and guns, and portrays himself as a cigar-smoking playboy – talks about hitting and choking women, trashing their belongings and stopping them from going out.

…

In his Strike It Big podcast appearance in February, Farage said Tate had been “an important voice” for men, who were being told that male culture should be looked down on.

“Tate was a very important voice for an emasculated … you three guys, you are all 25, you are all kind of being told you can’t be blokes, you can’t do laddish, fun, bloke things … That’s almost what you’re being told. That masculinity is something we should look down upon, something we should frown upon.”

So get out there and beat up some women!

Well you see by “inclusivity drive” we mean inclusion of more boys and no girls.

A leading Scottish school is facing a backlash after its head girl was replaced with a boy in what it claimed was an inclusivity drive.

It is an inclusivity drive – it’s more inclusive of boys.

Williamwood High School in East Renfrewshire has scrapped its positions of head boy and head girl and replaced them with two gender neutral “captains” who are elected by other pupils. Under the system, two of the three male candidates secured the posts while none of the four girls who put themselves forward were chosen.

So it’s inclusive of pupils who don’t want girls as heads or captains or bosses or leaders or whatever label the school comes up with.

The school is facing a backlash from parents and female pupils who claimed that girls are being denied opportunities under the supposedly “progressive” policy. Securing the posts can boost university applications and offer other opportunities such as public speaking.

Yes and that’s why they should all go to boys! Girls are no good at things like university and public speaking.

The school is currently in the process of applying for charter status from the controversial charity LGBT Youth Scotland, which advises against use of words such as boy and girl in classrooms. The organisation advises schools that terms such as “head pupil” are “more inclusive” as alternatives may distress pupils who identify as transgender or non-binary.

Ah. So that’s the real reason. Erasing girls from everything is more “inclusive” of hypothetical gender-magic pupils.

A spokesman for the council said: “Across all our schools, senior pupil leadership teams are in place to represent their peers. The composition of these leadership teams varies, with many schools across Scotland moving away from a head boy and a head girl to appointments of school captains to allow for greater equality.”

But that doesn’t allow for greater equality, you imbecile. Pay attention. It enables less equality, as in zero.

The Telegraph reports on the Times report on Starmer’s hostility to women. (Meta enough yet?)

Writing in an article for The Times, Ms Rowling also attacked Sir Keir for failing to defend Rosie Duffield, the gender-critical Labour MP who was investigated by her own party and has received death threats for her gender-critical views.

“Rosie has received literally no support from Starmer over the threats and abuse, some of which has originated from within the Labour Party itself, and has had a severe, measurable impact on her life,” said Ms Rowling.

And, just in case anyone is coming in late, it’s not just a matter of passive no support, as it were; it’s a matter of evading the question when asked, of changing the subject when asked, of saying “Look” and then something irrelevant when asked.

On Thursday night’s BBC Question Time, the Labour leader was asked whether he agreed with Rosie Duffield, Labour candidate, on the issue of sex and gender. Ms Duffield has long argued that spaces for biological women need to be protected, and that trans women should not be viewed as the same as biological women.

He replied that he now believed the same as Sir Tony Blair, that men had penises and women vaginas. Ms Duffield, the Labour candidate for Canterbury who was previously investigated by the party over her gender-critical views, tweeted sarcastically: “From now on, I shall be submitting my every comment and thought (particularly those mainstream views which most people agree with) to the former Labour prime minister so that it may officially be de-toxified.”

Well he’s a guy so…

On Question Time, Sir Keir said: “On the biology, I agree with what Tony Blair said in relation to men having penises and women having vaginas.” However, in a seeming criticism of activists who do not believe in trans ideology, he added: “I was worried by the way in which the debate was being conducted: it got very toxic… and we lost sight of people in that.”

Yes why are we so vehement about this? Why don’t we just kick back and relax while men take everything we’ve fought for? While we’re at it why don’t we make a really nice dinner?

JKR has a stemwinder of a piece on Labour’s contempt for women.

She went to a launch party for The Women Who Wouldn’t Wheesht yesterday evening, and got home just in time to join her husband watching Keir Starmer on TV.

“Three years ago,” the woman in the studio audience said to Keir Starmer, “you criticised your MP Rosie Duffield for saying ‘only women have a cervix’. You recently backtracked on this. What do you believe now, and how do we know that you will stick to your views?” Ah, Cervixgate. I remember it well. It was September 2021 and I was sitting at my kitchen table reading over the chapter I’d finished the day before. The TV was on in the background, my husband was making toast, and I thought I must have misheard what the Labour leader had just said, so I reached for the remote. I rewound the programme and replayed his answer, then rewound and replayed it again.

She didn’t want to believe what she’d heard.

But I hadn’t heard Starmer wrongly. When asked whether he agreed with Rosie Duffield that “only women have a cervix”, he’d responded, “well, it is something that shouldn’t be said. It is not right.”

If you’d catapulted me forwards in time from 1997, the year Labour last succeeded in ending a long stretch of Tory rule, and told me their male leader would appear live on television, dictating what women were allowed to say about their own reproductive systems, I’d have had no frame of reference by which to understand what would have seemed an utterance of outright lunacy.

Unfortunately, by 2021, Starmer’s answer had to be seen in the context of a Labour Party that not merely saw the rights of women as disposable, but struggled to say what a woman was at all.

And why? Because so much of the left is fathoms deep in outright lunacy.

Some of this is almost funny, but loses its humour when real-world consequences of gender ideology arise. When asked whether violent sex offenders who transition should be rehoused in women’s prisons, Lisa Nandy, the shadow secretary for international development, said: “I think trans women are women, I think trans men are men, so I think they should be in the prison of their choosing.”

Rebecca Long-Bailey, the candidate for Salford, said female victims of male violence shouldn’t use their trauma “as an argument to discriminate against trans people” and vowed to change laws to stop women’s refuges excluding men who identify as women.

Women shouldn’t “use their trauma” to defend their rights against an onslaught from men, but men should definitely use their imaginary oppression by women who know a man when they see one to defend not their rights but their grotesque new privileges.

“On the biology,” Starmer began, “I agree with what Tony Blair said the other day, in relation to men having penises and women having vaginas.”

Pause for universal disbelief. I know we already knew about this, but the asininity of it doesn’t wear off. Oh I see, Tony Blair said the other day that men have penises and women have vaginas. Did he really?!?! How very exciting and groundbreaking and inspirational. Thank you so much Mister Starmer for quoting him saying that because otherwise we would never have thought of such a thing.

And off we meandered into the familiar trans activist talking points where so many Labour frontbenchers appear to feel most comfortable: “… my view in life is to give respect and dignity to everyone, whatever their position. And I was worried at the time, you referenced that particular debate [when Rosie Duffield stated biological facts], by the way in which the debate was being conducted, because it got very toxic, very divided, very hard line …”

Thank you again Mister Starmer for yet again telling us that Rosie Duffield is a mean bitch unlike you and the rest of your friends who all know that men are women if they put on lipstick.

JKR talks about her friendship with Rosie.

She and I share more than the occasional meal and a fairly sweary WhatsApp thread. Last month, a man received a suspended prison sentence for sending both of us death threats. Rosie was to be taken out with a gun; I was to be beaten to death with a hammer. The level of threats Rosie has received is such that she’s had to hire personal security and was recently advised not to conduct in-person hustings.

Is this what Starmer meant, when he talked about toxic, divided debate? A female MP in his own party being intimidated and harassed? Or was he referencing the activists in black masks who turn up at women’s demonstrations with the declared intention of punching “Terfs”, an intention that has more than once translated into action? Was he perhaps thinking of the trans activists who sang “f*** you” over a microphone as women from all over the world queued outside FiLia, the feminist conference, to discuss issues like female genital mutilation? It didn’t seem so.

The impression given by Starmer at Thursday’s debate was that there had been something unkind, something toxic, something hard line in Rosie’s words, even though almost identical words had sounded perfectly reasonable when spoken by Blair.

Well there’s a reason for that. It’s because men are nice and women are bitches.

Erase erase erase