The BBC finds another bus to drive over Rosie Duffield:

A Labour MP wants a meeting with Sir Keir Starmer to clarify where the party stands on transgender issues.

Rosie Duffield, who has clashed with campaigners over her views on self identification for trans people, said the party’s position was unclear.

But a senior Labour MP said it was “being used as a wedge issue” when the party should be focused elsewhere.

She’s just a stupid junior MP who should be ignored, yeah?

Canterbury MP Ms Duffield has regularly used social media to outline her own position on transgender issues.

She believes that biological females should have protected spaces where biological males are not allowed to go, such as domestic violence refuges and prisons, and she is against people being able to self-identify as trans to gain access to those spaces.

I think that’s wrong. The issue isn’t people being able to self-identify as trans, it’s being able to self-identify as the other sex when doing so encroaches on women’s rights. I don’t think anybody objects to people being able to self-identify as trans.

Ms Duffield has said she is “completely supportive of trans rights”, but she has been condemned by some LGBT+ groups for her position – which say trans men and women should be treated the same as biological men and women – as well as for endorsing controversial tweets on the issue.

Explains the BBC, eager to make sure we really get why the BBC wants to call her a terf without using the word.

And two of her staff members resigned from her office over her views.

A senior Labour MP, who did not want to be identified, told the BBC they were frustrated with the “oxygen” being given to the subject, calling it “a stupid, pointless, manufactured row about rights” that was distracting from the issues that needed debating.

They added: “Let’s talk about how every single trans person awaiting NHS treatment is having their rights to see a specialist in 18 weeks under the NHS constitution breached, for example, rather than whether Rosie Duffield thinks everyone should have their genitals and chromosomes checked to go to the toilet.”

Notice how much more space is given to this unnamed senior MP compared to the space given to Duffield. Notice the contempt in that last sentence.

They then give a crappy unfair slanted “analysis” starting with this shit:

Rosie Duffield has taken a stance on an emotive topic that gives rise to controversy, around people’s identities, the right to self-identify and gain access to certain spaces.

But is there any mention of controversy around women’s safety, the right to recognize a man when we see one, and the right to refuse to throw women’s spaces open to men? No there is not. All the emotive and the controversy and the rights are on the trans side, and women defending our rights are just stupid cruel bitches who should shut up.

And I’m tired of reading this bilge so I’m stopping.

Oh gosh, Andrew Windsor is stressed.

Royal courtiers fear the Duke of York is being failed by the strategy pursued by his London-based legal team, amid growing concern that his “wall of silence” is increasingly damaging the monarchy.

Note that that describes two completely different issues, which are likely in tension with each other. Windsor’s concern for himself is not at all the same thing as the monarchy’s concern for itself, and the latter will always trump the former if there’s a conflict. There’s a whole slew of people between A. Windsor and the throne so he’ll be overboard in a heartbeat if the bosses think it’s necessary.

Prince Andrew, 61, is “stressed” and “worried” and there is a distinct change of mood in his camp, sources admit, as the pressure to respond to the allegations intensifies and he faces the prospect of a legal battle that could drag on for years, costing millions.

A royal source told The Telegraph: “There is growing disquiet over the advice being given to the Duke by his London legal team in the face of this potentially highly damaging lawsuit which also has wider reputational implications for the institution of the monarchy. 

“The legal team’s wall of silence and policy of evasion only adds to the impression [that] the Duke has something to hide and there is widespread concern that things have been allowed to get to this point.”

Uh huh. That’s the trap door getting closer to being opened under the Duke.

The Guardian is very cautious about how it talks about Rosie Duffield – cautious in one way and incautious in another, that is. Mindful of one audience and bluntly indifferent to another.

Rosie Duffield has called for Keir Starmer to meet her and other female Labour MPs to discuss the party’s policy on transgender issues, confirming she will not attend Labour’s annual conference over worries she could face abuse because of her views on the subject.

She says he says he wants to do the meeting, but…somehow it hasn’t happened yet. I suspect it will go on somehow not happening.

Then the Guardian gets cold feet.

The Canterbury MP has become a focal point for criticism from some LGBT groups in Labour for actions such as liking a tweet that said “individuals with a cervix” should instead be referred to as “women”.

Actions? Actions?? Liking a tweet is “action”? This is what I mean by “cautious” – this creepy sniffing out of ludicrous trivia in order to “balance” reporting on threats and abuse. Liking a tweet really isn’t much of an “action.”

In July, Labour LGBT groups called for the party to investigate her after she liked a tweet from a gay US rapper which complained about trans groups appropriating the word “queer” and described them as “mostly heterosexuals cosplaying [costume playing] as the opposite sex and as gay”.

There again – liking a tweet. Does it not occur to anyone that just liking a tweet is not really strong evidence of anything? That it’s outright absurd as evidence that an MP should be “investigated”?

Asked if she accepted that liking the latter tweet could have inflamed the debate, Duffield defended her decision, saying the tweet author, whom she knew via social media, was “incredibly distressed and insulted” about what he felt was the appropriation of gay culture, adding: “I think he has a valid right to talk about it without being cancelled.”

All this because she liked a tweet.

Like trying to nail melted butter to the wall.

Aha! Alrighty then! So she admits it, so…

That butter is melted.

Word is, the “expert” who said it doesn’t matter if more women are murdered is “Sophie-Grace” Chappell. (What would happen if Sophie-Grace Chappell and Sophie LaBelle encountered each other? Would the universe implode?) We’ve encountered “Sophie-Grace” before – he teaches philosophy.

Oh, I see, “it doesn’t matter.” Well that’s all right then.

Sigh.

Also not a woman. The “woman” in question is not a woman, he’s a man who said he’s a woman in order to get access to naked women and girls. Even if you believe every article of the trans dogma that guy is still not a woman.

And sadly, predatory men who like to do things like spy on or flash or grab or rape women in private spaces where no one will hear them scream – predatory men of that type are not rare. They’re far from being all men, obviously, but they’re not scarce.

Always always always the tender enlightened concern is for the man who claims to be a woman, never never never for the women he sexually harasses. Always the women are shrugged off or called names, while the male is wrapped in cashmere and given a brandy lollipop to suck.

Woman’s Place UK did a transcript of Andrew Marr’s conversation with Ed Davey, head of the Liberal Democrats.

Andrew Marr: Let’s try something else. Let’s talk about free speech. What is wrong with this phrase: ‘woman – adult human female’.

Ed Davey: Well, Liberal Democrats believe that trans rights are really important because trans people are some of the most discriminated against in our society today. Huge health problems, high suicide rate and I think everybody ought to worry about that. The real issue, I think, is the toxification of the debate. There was a time…

Two sentences in and already my hair is on fire. News flash: women are discriminated against too. Read up on rape, domestic violence, “kink” that results in a surge of women choked to death, pay differentials, attacks on abortion rights, and I could go on. Also are trans people really “some of the most discriminated against in our society today”? And are the statistics skewed by the presence of mental illness and other factors? In other words does Ed Davey actually know that “trans people are some of the most discriminated against in our society today” or is he actually thinking of people with mental health problems? Either way, why on earth does he think discrimination is a reason for doing everything trans activists say to do but not a reason for paying any attention to women at all? Why does he think all the “discrimination” and health problems and so on belong to trans people while none of them belong to women? And why does he think it’s ok for him to decide that?

AM: We’ve jumped from a phrase to Boris Johnson. I do want to come back to this phrase. What is wrong with the phrase? Can you explain to people watching what is wrong with the phrase ‘woman – adult human female’? What’s wrong with that?

ED: Well, I mean, you…the phrase doesn’t actually really encapsulate the debate to be honest. That’s what’s the problem with it. The issue that we have been really clear is that a trans woman is a woman, a trans man is a man and that is the issue that we’re fighting on.

Then they’re fighting on a stupid lie.

We believe trans rights are human rights

But what are “trans rights”? Trans people should have human rights, obviously. What rights specific to trans people should they have? And why?

AM: I’m trying to keep off Boris Johnson at the moment and onto Ed Davey and the Liberal Democrats. Because the reason I keep using that phrase as I’m sure you know is that one of your members, Natalie Bird, has been banned from standing as a Liberal Democrat in any circumstances for ten years because she wore a T-shirt which had that slogan on it.

That “slogan” which is also a simple dictionary definition.

Women just don’t matter.

A trans woman is a woman, and a woman is…? Not worth bothering about, it seems.

Suzanne Moore on Rosie Duffield and All That:

So forgive me, if when I read that Rosie Duffield cannot go to the Labour Party conference because her safety cannot be guaranteed, I am more than a little miffed. Luciana Berger had to have police escorts at conference as she was Jewish.  What a welcoming era the Corbynites created!

Duffield has actually done two crimes now that are virtually interchangeable in the Labour ranks. In 2018 she attend a rally . Enough is Enough , a rally against anti-Jewish racism. All Labour MPs should have been there, only a few were.

The second is that she thinks that “only women have a cervix”. Crazy lady !!!  She also thinks  male-bodied people should not enter female only spaces simply  because they identify as women.

Iss transphobia innit.

As a female MP was murdered, I am astonished at Keir Starmer’s silence and appalled that many female MPs who I respect, dare not speak out. Why? Because they will come for you if you defend Duffield? Listen, they will come for you anyway.

“Transphobia” is now a conduit for the hatred of women to dress itself up as principled activism. For most of these fools, activism is insulting women on Twitter. Many of them are hardly big thinkers but happy to embrace an identity politics that is supremely individualistic and hyper-capitalist, the actual opposite of the socialism that they aspire to.

Wait you mean rabid individualism isn’t socialist? Who knew?!

Brilliant reporting. “Mouthy woman blows off conference because she’s a bitch.”

She “says she won’t attend her party conference”…is there something missing here? Oh yes, the threats! It doesn’t mention the threats!

It carefully doesn’t mention that she feels she can’t attend her party conference because of the threats against her.

And the blurb on the photo is downright flippant about it – she “skips” conference. What, she had to get her nails done that day?

And it hauls in the LGB part so that readers will be left with the impression that she’s homophobic.

And it refers to “trans rights” and “transgender rights” but says not a word about women’s rights.

And it refers to “trans rights” and “transgender rights” without explaining how very niche and peculiar and dubious those “rights” are – without explaining what a departure they are from more familiar rights, and what an intrusion they are on other people’s rights.

And it refers to “trans rights” and “transgender rights” without even saying what those rights are – leaving readers to conclude that Duffield thinks trans people shouldn’t have basic human rights that everyone else has, which is not the case at all.

It’s disgusting.

Wannabe riot fizzled.

As the Republican party and Donald Trump’s more ardent supporters work to rewrite the narrative of the attempted coup, supporters of those arrested over it sought to turn it from a political to a human rights issue with the “Justice for J6” rally near the Capitol on Saturday.

As a protest, it was a flop.

Turnout was at best half of the 700 predicted by organisers, which in itself fell well short of the many thousands who stormed Congress in January. The event organiser, Matt Braynard, a former Trump campaign operative, blamed the poor attendance on government intimidation and press scaremongering.

It’s shocking when the government intimidates people just because they want to seize the Capitol, murder all the Democrats, and make Trump dictator for life.

Instagram might have something to do with it.

According to internal research leaked to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), the app has made body image issues worse for one in three girls, and in one Facebook study of teenagers in the UK and the US, more than 40% of Instagram users who said they felt “unattractive” said the feeling began while using the app.

Instagram has more than 1 billion users worldwide and an estimated 30 million in the UK, with Kim Kardashian, Selena Gomez and Ariana Grande among the accounts with hundreds of millions of followers between them….

Two in five girls (40%) aged 11 to 16 in the UK say they have seen images online that have made them feel insecure or less confident about themselves. This increases to half (50%) in girls aged 17 to 21, according to research by Girlguiding in its annual girls’ attitudes survey.

Why would anyone want to look like Kim Kardashian though? She looks like a sex doll. She looks like someone who never does anything other than buff her appearance. Why don’t girls want to look like girls and women who do things, who are interesting, who have something to say?

Facebook’s in-depth research into the photo-sharing app stated that Instagram had a deeper effect on teenage girls because it focused more on the body and lifestyle, compared with TikTok’s emphasis on performance videos such as dancing, and Snapchat’s jokey face features. “Social comparison is worse on Instagram,” said the Facebook study.

Pretty much what I’m saying. Dancing, jokes, soccer, poetry, running, astronomy, rock climbing, painting – a million things other than having a Barbie doll face and tits. Why can’t girls just be people?

Beeban Kidron, the crossbench peer who sits on the joint committee into the online safety bill and was behind the recent introduction of a children’s privacy code, says Ofcom, the UK communications watchdog, will have a vital role in scrutinising algorithms.

“The value in algorithmic oversight for regulators, is that the decisions that tech companies make will become transparent, including decisions like FB took to allow Instagram to target teenage girls with images and features that ended in anxiety, depression and suicidal thoughts. Algorithmic oversight is the key to society wrestling back some control.”

It makes perfect sense that it’s Facebook, of course. Facebook started out as literally face book – Zuckerberg’s judgments on his Harvard classmates who had the bad luck to be female.

This is an important point.

It’s also a gross violation of the child’s right to be told the truth.

I think that matters a lot, because children don’t know what’s true, they have to rely on adults to tell them, so it’s grossly unfair for adults to tell them lies (with rare exceptions for compelling reasons). It’s part of adults’ job to educate children, so they shouldn’t tell them stupid confusing lies about basic worldly facts.

Originally a comment by Bjarte Foshaug on The entitlement of children.

Mostly Cloudy #3

What on earth has happened?

As I keep saying, I think people tend to get involved in various kinds of activism or movements out of a sincere desire to do good (as they see it). But once you have identified your ingroup, other, far less admirable, motives (deference to authority, group conformity, avoiding conflict, keeping the group together, reducing cognitive dissonance, consistency with former acts or statements etc.) gradually come to supplant the original cause, even to the point of actively embracing the polar opposite of everything that got you into activism in the first place.

We see this in the case of feminists who – less than 10 years ago – knew perfectly well (as we can tell by their own words back then) how to tell a biological male from a biological female and identify which biological sex was most disadvantaged by the patriarchy, but have since gone on to deny that biological females even exist as an identifiable group, let alone have any issues worth addressing in their own right. We see it in the case of “LGBT” activists who – once again, less than 10 years ago – used to fight for increased acceptance of same-sex attraction (as opposed to attraction to people who think or feel in certain ways best left unspecified, call themselves by certain names, use certain pronouns etc.), but have since gone on to argue that same-sex attraction is the pinnacle of bigotry and evil. And we see it in the case of anti-racists who used to rage about white people appropriating the struggles of POC, but have since gone on to insist that TRAs – no matter how white – have an absolute monopoly on “non-white” feminism as well as an unlimited right to claim the opinions of POC for themselves whether the latter do in fact hold said opinions or not.

Trump sent yet another moronic (and criminal!) letter to the Georgia Secretary of State yesterday, shouting at him to cancel the Georgia vote because reasons.

Much voter fraud! 43,000! Chain of Custody rules! Many other claims! Please check it out and then decertify the Erection excuse me the Election, or whatever the correct legal remedy is, I don’t give a fuck, just put a stamp on it or a big Sharpie signature or some lipstick or whatever, just do it. I’ve told you this like a MILLION TIMES you asshole so why haven’t you done it yet? People do not understand why you don’t do it! PEOPLE I tell you. Me, and my kids, except maybe what’s her name, Tiffany’s, and all the people in the world, and some in Russia too – they do not understand why you!! Why you fight so hard that the election truth not be told? Why you? Why so hard? Why not be told? Tremendous disservice. Guy’s illegitimate, unlike me, I’m tremendous legitimate, People don’t understand why you.

Never mind Karens, it’s the Lavernes we need to worry about.

“I just believe as a non-essentialist intersectional feminist that womanhood is constituted beyond bodies, chromosomes and reproduction. Insisting trans women are always and only “males” as you say is getting us killed and denied equal protection under the law here in the States”

That “just” – it’s not a “just.” There is no “just” there. There would be no “just” to my saying “I just believe as a non-essentialist intersectional anti-racist that blackness is constituted beyond bodies, chromosomes and skin, and thus that I’m black too, like you, because I say I am, because I identify as black, because I feel black.” That would be seen as an outrageous claim, and rightly so. It’s not some little trifle that can be introduced with a “just.”

Next, “believe” – it doesn’t matter what he “believes,” or says he believes. Anyone can “believe” anything, or claim to. It’s a stupid thing to believe. Lots of things are stupid to believe, and that men can be women by saying so is one of them.

Next, “feminist” – he is not a feminist, and he doesn’t get to pretend to be a feminist to help him pretend to be a woman, and then bully and coerce us into agreeing with him that he’s a woman, and a better smarter more feminist and “intersectional” woman than we are. All of that is an obvious con game.

Next, how womanhood is constituted. It is exactly through bodies, and nothing else. It’s not a club, a mood, a state of mind, a set of clothes, a hairdo, a pronoun. It’s the body. You have a female body? You’re a woman. You have the other kind? You’re a man.

Next, “getting us killed” – no it isn’t. Murder rates for trans people are lower than the overall average, and they’re tied to sex work, not gender critical feminism.

Last, “equal protection under the law” – nonsense. Nothing we say has anything to do with denying trans people equal protection under the law.

Men who claim to be feminist women need to stop trying to bully women into agreeing with them.

Women must not have any private space away from men, says top man.

Trans women should be allowed to enter all public places, the Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey says, as he accuses Boris Johnson of stirring up “a culture war” on the issue.

Never mind Boris Johnson, never mind men fighting over who gets to boss everyone, what about women?

Nothing. Nothing about women. Ed Davey doesn’t give a flying fuck about women. He may not even realize we exist.

There’s a transcript.

“So there should not be spaces where biological males cannot go?”

“No. No, no, precisely.”

Well, that’s clear.

Janice Turner in the Times:

The resignation of [former shadow women and equalities secretary] Marsha De Cordova leaves a vacancy for a job one MP calls “the most poisoned chalice in politics”. Labour, like all progressive parties, is being torn apart by the quasi-religious schism of gender. Two warring tribes have emerged: “gender critical” feminists who believe single-sex spaces, in prisons or refuges, are needed to protect women; and LGBT Labour which argues if a biological male identifies as a woman they must, immediately and in every circumstance, be treated as female.

… De Cordova was vilified for meeting feminists who’ve formed the Labour Women’s Declaration on sex-based rights, and for declining to address Stonewall’s conference fringe meeting. Her reasons for resigning are complex, but she reportedly felt cut adrift by Starmer.

As does Rosie Duffield MP, who has endured such extreme physical threats for the crime of tweeting that only women have cervixes, she won’t attend next week’s Labour conference. Starmer has texted Duffield, a victim of domestic abuse, to say he’s sorry she felt unsafe, but offered no help with security. Nor has he publicly defended her after a year of angry demands she lose the whip. “Keir is terrified of conflict,” says one MP. “He just hopes it will all go away.”

Yeah that’s great. The man in charge is “terrified of conflict,” i.e. disagreement, so he abandons the woman to her fate, which includes threats of actual literal violence, not mere “conflict.”

In all left-of- centre political parties the gender wars are escalating. Asked on Radio 4’s Today if he believed “there should be spaces where biological males can’t go”, the LibDem leader Sir Ed Davey replied: “No.” The very morning a government report revealed an epidemic of violence against women and girls, Davey promised to scrap all existing female safeguards.

So women and girls are going to start to be afraid to leave the house. Taliban by other means.

In the SNP, civil war has broken out over its pledge, in alliance with the Greens, to push through self-ID for over-16s. A movement, Women Won’t Wheesht (shut up), was formed to oppose SNP proposals such as erasing data about biological sex from the Scottish census and denying raped women the right to choose a female medical examiner. When the Tory MSP Murdo Fraser referenced a large WWW protest outside the Scottish parliament, Nicola Sturgeon heckled: “Shame on you!” Women’s concerns, she said, are “not valid”.

The concerns of men who say they are women are not just valid but positively sacred, while the concerns of women are so much fluff.

Starmer too needs to grasp the gender nettle. These extreme LGBT activists are a small, unrepresentative hard-left group who hate him anyway: women are half the electorate. Starmer must choose a shadow equalities minister ready to defend women. Then he must defend her. Because there’s a new political slogan in town: “If you don’t respect my sex, you can’t expect to get my X.”

Oh but conflict.

Covid quack becomes random Covid bullshitter:

A doctor in Oregon has had his license revoked for continually refusing to follow COVID-19 guidelines when dealing with patients and spreading misinformation about face masks.

Turns out doctors aren’t supposed to tell whoppers about a lethal virus in the midst of a pandemic.

The Oregon Medical Board issued a final order on September 2 against Steven Arthur LaTulippe for “dishonorable or unprofessional conduct; repeated negligence in the practice of medicine; and gross negligence in the practice of medicine.” He was also fined $10,000.

…

He also spread misinformation to his patients about masks being ineffective against COVID-19 and falsely claimed they could cause carbon dioxide poisoning.

…

The physician was also recorded dismissing the importance of masks in a speech at a “Stop the Steal” rally in Salem on November 7, which backed Donald Trump‘s false claims that the 2020 election was rigged.

“I hate to tell you this, I might scare you, but I and my staff, none of us, once wore a mask in my clinic,” he told the crowd, reported The Huffington Post. “And how many problems did we have in our clinic from that? Zero.”

The scientifically trained mind at work.