Well that’s a kind of activism I guess.

A former SNP activist who once tweeted how he wanted “beat the fuck” out of feminists has been jailed for six years for a series of sexual assaults. Cameron Downing, 24, preyed on six victims at locations across Scotland during a course of conduct which began when he was just 16-years-old.

Whaddya know. Rape and fantasizing about beating the fuck out of feminists in one guy. Who could possibly imagine?

Downing, a former Drama student and an equalities convenor for the SNP’s London branch, spent his trial denying any wrongdoing. The accused told the jury in his evidence that they identified as being non binary, said he hadn’t been threatening the male and was battling ‘complex’ mental health issues at the time of the abuse.

“The accused told the jury in his evidence that they identified as being non binary” – so he told the jury that the jury identified as non binary? Seems odd.

Last month, jurors spent two days deliberating their verdicts before returning guilty verdicts on charges of physical and sexual assaults on Downing, whose pronouns are he/they.

So he’s male and non binary. Seems not so much odd as a flat contradiction.

It is not the first time that Downing has come to public attention.

In 2022, it emerged that Downing tweeted about how he wanted to “beat the fuck out of some terfs and transphobes”. He also tweeted “I fucking hate terfs and transphobes with such a passion.” The tweets caused Harry Potter author JK Rowling to say: “Nicola Sturgeon’s Scotland: A place where an equalities officer feels free to declare in public how much he wants to beat up non-compliant women.”

Trans ideology has made it acceptable again to trash and threaten women. No wonder men like Billy Bragg and Jolyon Maugham love it so much.

Anti-Trump Republicans are aghast.

Funny kind of “teaching.”

And do we in fact know “how important it is to listen, and be respectful, when somebody tells you who they are and how they feel”? I don’t know that. Suppose it’s a stranger sitting next to you on the bus, for instance? Or someone you work with but don’t know well? Or a neighbor you don’t like? I don’t think I have any duty to fall silent and listen when random people talk to me about themselves.

This may seem peripheral but I don’t think it is. I think gender-woo and self-obsession and self-importance are inextricably linked. The belief that people can swap genders goes with the belief that people should think about themselves most of the time and that they should also talk about themselves all the time regardless of whether anyone wants to hear them or not.

New York state is suing a county to force it to let males ruin female sports.

New York’s attorney general sued Nassau County on Monday to block enforcement of a new law banning transgender athletes from playing in girls’ and women’s sports at county-owned parks and facilities.

The issue is not that they’re “transgender” but that they’re male. Males should not be playing in girls’ and women’s sports. (Nor should girls and women who are on testosterone, but for some strange reason that doesn’t come up as much.)

In the complaint, Attorney General Letitia James said the new law, “Fairness for Women and Girls in Sports,” is “in fact not an act of fairness,” but entrenches “regressive and invasive” gender stereotypes.

Like the “stereotype” that males have numerous physical advantages over females? The stereotype that’s not a stereotype but just the reality? And what’s “invasive” is letting men and boys invade and destroy women’s and girls’ sports.

“Here in New York, every person has the right to be exactly who they are free from discrimination, and my office will always protect that right,” James said in a statement.

But what she’s defending is the right to be exactly who they are NOT. Men are exactly not women.

At least the people of New York state are saner than Letitia James.

In a Siena College poll, opens new tab in April, 66% of New York voters favored requiring high school athletes to compete only with people of the sex they were assigned at birth, with just 27% opposed. Democrats also favored such a requirement, by a 52% to 38% margin, while Republicans voted 83% to 15% in favor.

Supporters of restrictions have said transgender females have competitive advantages that make their participation in girls’ and women’s competitions unfair.

There’s a reason for their saying that. It’s true.

Behold: an idiot.

…this idea that like well, ok, these marriages were fundamentally, you know, they were they were maybe even violent, but certainly they were unhappy, and so getting rid of them, and making it easier for people to shift spouses, like they change their underwear, that’s gunna make people happier in the long term. And maybe it worked out for the moms and dads, I’m skeptical, but it really didn’t work out for the kids in those marriages, and that’s what I think all of us should [clip ends]

So it works out for kids to grow up in a family where there is violence, which of course Vance doesn’t mention is nearly always man on woman violence? It’s healthy and inspiring for kids to see their fathers beating up their mothers?

I am skeptical.

From the Times live updates:

The sweep of Cannon’s decision was a surprise at the Justice Department. The outcome was not. Jack Smith’s team saw the Trump documents case as essentially stalled out for months because of Cannon’s slow pace and had more or less written off the possibility of a trial this year.

That’s probably because the Justice Department and Jack Smith are aware that Cannon is a freakishly underqualified judge appointed by the freakishly underqualified Trump to serve Trump’s interests as he tries to get away with anything and everything.

Even before her bombshell decision on Monday to dismiss former President Donald J. Trump’s classified documents case, Judge Aileen M. Cannon has made any number of unorthodox rulings.

Since taking control of the case last June, in fact, many of her decisions have been so outside the norm that they have come to seem like business as usual.

Still, almost no one — including some defense lawyers working on the case — expected Judge Cannon to kill the documents case by ruling that Jack Smith, the special counsel who filed the indictment, had been unconstitutionally appointed to his job. And her timing could not have been more shocking, delivering Mr. Trump a major legal victory on the opening day of the Republican National Convention, where he will soon be formally named as his party’s nominee for president.

I suppose the point is to rub our noses in it. “Haha we can do anything we want and you can’t do jackshit about it.”

Many legal experts questioned her decision to hold a hearing last month on the question of Mr. Smith’s appointment, arguing that several courts reaching back to the Watergate era had already upheld the legality of independent prosecutors. The hearing was even odder, the experts pointed out, because Judge Cannon allowed outside parties who had filed friend-of-the-court briefs to address her directly for up to 30 minutes — a practice that rarely takes place at the trial level and is more common in appellate-level courts like the Supreme Court.

So she likes to have a little fun at our expense, is that so wrong?

Look if you have to borrow a megaphone are you really ready to change the world?

Three lawyers a year ago on why Cannon shouldn’t be involved in this case at all:

Soon after the news broke that Donald Trump will become the first former president to face federal criminal charges—37 counts that include willful retention of national defense information under the Espionage Act, conspiracy to obstruct justice, concealing documents, and false statements—it was also revealed that Judge Aileen Cannon is scheduled to oversee the case. In our view as experts with more than a century of collective experience in judicial and other ethics questions, that cannot stand. She must recuse herself from the case or, if she refuses, be reassigned by the appropriate judicial oversight authorities.

But she wasn’t, and here we are.

 Cannon heard Trump’s challenge to the government’s classified-documents investigation, appointed a special master to review the documents, and temporarily barred the Justice Department from using those records in its investigation. That much-maligned decision was later reversed by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11^th Circuit consisting of three conservative judges: two Trump appointees and the G.W. Bush–appointed Chief Judge William Pryor. They wrote that her decision violated “clear” law and that her approach “would be a radical reordering of our caselaw limiting the federal courts’ involvement in criminal investigations” and “violate bedrock separation-of-powers limitations.”

Of course violating those separation of powers limitations was the whole point. Limitations would mean she couldn’t hamstring the case against Trump, and she’s there to hamstring the case against Trump.

Now that the same investigation has resulted in an indictment against Trump, Cannon’s prior, fundamentally erroneous approach casts a shadow over the proceedings. Because her earlier handling of this case went well outside the judicial norm and was roundly criticized by the Court of Appeals, reasonable observers of this case could question her impartiality. Federal law has a way to deal with this challenge: Under 28 U.S.C. § 455(a), a judge “shall disqualify himself [or herself] in any proceeding in which his [or her] impartiality might reasonably be questioned.” Cannon’s situation clearly fits that test, and she is obligated to recuse herself in Trump’s case.

But of course she didn’t do that, and here we are.

I’m looking around for some law people takes.

Judge Cannon just did the unthinkable: She dismissed the Trump classified documents case on the repeatedly rejected basis that DOJ violated the Constitution’s Appointments Clause by appointing Special Counsel Smith at all! DOJ must appeal right away. On SCOTUS, only Justice Thomas took that view in Trump v. United States. This finally gives Jack Smith an opportunity to seek her removal from the case. I think the case for doing so is very strong.

Guido Fawkes on the pompous absurdity and absurd pomposity of Mr Maugham:

Jolyon Maugham has been having quite the weekend – mainly consisting of a meltdown over Wes Streeting’s decision to continue the ban on puberty blockers being given to children. He issued advice to every trans family: Evacuate the UK now…

The fox-beater has been barraging Wes Streeting with tens of “questions” including such killer takedowns as: Why are puberty blockers still allowed to be used in clinical trials but not outside of them? To be fair to Jolyon, he isn’t a medical expert…

Last night Jolyon threw off the blinders of privilege and declared himself in possession of the “skeleton key” to “a whole new moral universe” thanks to his trans work.

Someone should do a new comedy series: Yes Barrister.

Jolyon is outdoing himself in the pomposity stakes.

Just look at that. Hello Government Person, if you ignore what I, alone among mortals, am telling you, bad things will happen. Yes I really am that important.

How do people not get that marching around shouting about how important you are is not a good look?

If you’re wondering who Pooter is, he’s the diarist of Diary of a Nobody. Hilarious book, a must-read.

Sigh. Of course. Trump’s judge has thrown out the documents case.

The federal judge overseeing the classified documents charges against former president Donald Trump has dismissed the indictment on the grounds that special counsel Jack Smith was improperly appointed, according to a court filing Monday.

U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon’s ruling is a remarkable win for Trump, whose lawyers have thrown longshot argument after longshot argument to dismiss the case. Other courts have rejected similar arguments to the one that he made in Florida about the legality of Smith’s appointment.

But none of that matters, because he had the good luck to be able to put his own chosen patsy in that job and she is doing the expected.

One Reichstag fire after another.

Ursula Doyle speaks up:

My name is Ursula Doyle, and I have worked in book publishing for more than thirty years. Since 2008 I have worked at Hachette UK, one of the UK’s leading publishing groups, first at its Virago imprint (a sub-brand of the publisher) before setting up my own imprint, Fleet, in 2016. Fleet publishes a wide range of fiction and nonfiction, and Fleet authors have between them won numerous awards, including four Pulitzers.

In 2020 I published Kathleen Stock’s influential book on sex and gender, Material Girls. Since then, I have been a target for abuse by colleagues in the book industry, who have used social media to accuse me of – among other things – bigotry, prejudice, transphobia and hatred, often tagging in my employer, Hachette, and Hachette’s Pride network. 

Hachette have done nothing to protect me, and have created a hostile working environment for me and anyone else who shares my views. When two of Fleet’s authors complained that my views were transphobic, the company agreed to move paperback editions of the authors’ books away from the imprint to another part of the business, damaging my reputation both inside and outside the company. I became ill with stress and associated conditions, and finally resigned. I am bringing a claim of discrimination on the grounds of my gender-critical belief (sometimes known as ‘sex realism’), and of sex discrimination.

Pledges are pouring in.

Gender critical women are the new…what…bosses? Priests? Scabs? Enslavers? Colonialists? The new all-powerful sneering unjust overlords who need to be overthrown and punished.

I’m taking a look at the publisher Hachette’s incloosion policy. I’ve spotted something quite funny (in its own warped way).

It lists a bunch of networks – AgeWise Network, AllTogether Network, Accessibility Network, Gender Balance Network – ah yes that’ll be the one, let’s look at the caption under that one.

The Gender Balance Network aims to eliminate the gender pay gap by focusing on equal recruitment and progression for all genders, at every level of the business.

What?

What is this “the gender pay gap” of which they speak?

If you google it you find it’s the pay gap between men and women. This doesn’t surprise you, because that’s what it’s always meant. What else would it mean?

But, Hachette says this is about all genders – which has to mean more than two, because otherwise they wouldn’t bother to say all. It would be stupid to say “this is about all two genders.” When it’s two you say both, not all.

So what pay gap is Hachette talking about then?

There’s no way to know.

So now the church is ordering people to forget all that pesky sciencey crap about human bodies and just focus on the soul believe Gender Dogma.

Church of England set to issue advice telling teachers to challenge ‘outdated terms’ around biological sex as critics argue new guidance is pushing gender ideology that a person’s sex is ‘assigned’ at birth

Church of England advice for teachers has been criticised for pushing the gender ideology that a person’s sex is ‘assigned’ at birth rather than a biological fact.

Guidance set to be issued to thousands of schools states that a transgender man is someone ‘who was assigned female at birth but identifies and lives as a man’, and a transgender woman ‘was assigned male at birth but identifies and lives as a woman’.

The statements are in the document Flourishing For All, which is backed by Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury, and tells teachers to challenge ‘outdated terms’.

Outdated terms like “god” and “soul” and “sin” and “blasphemy” you mean?

About a million children attend 4,630 Anglican schools.

That random remark seems to imply that Welby’s “advice” is to Anglican schools as opposed to all schools, which you would think the Mail would say explicitly instead of hinting.

C of E chief education officer Nigel Genders presented the draft anti-bullying document, which is out for public consultation, at the General Synod on Monday.

Wait. Nigel who? Genders? Is this a joke?

He said it was in response to the Government’s trans guidance for schools and a review of NHS children’s gender services that found transgender treatments were based on ‘weak evidence’.

But Ms Marsh and Ms Davies-Arai said the guidelines actually conflicted with the Department for Education’s draft transgender guidance, which says pupils must not be taught about the ‘concept of gender identity’.

Oh not be taught. Oops! Our bad! Sorry!

Sarah Kendzior on the real danger:

1) Yes, Trump knows what Project 20205 is. No, he likely doesn’t care, because policy is a thing other people do while he steals money and ensures impunity for himself and his backers.

2) Trump is not an ideologue. He is a bulldozer used by two GOP-linked networks that often collaborate.

3) The first network is made of hard right-wing ideologues that have been gradually implementing a neo-fascist US since the Reagan era, chipping away at courts, regulations, rights, etc. This is the Project 2025 network.

4) The second network is transnational organized crime, the network in which Trump is most at home. Their goal is to collapse the US and strip it and sell it for parts, much like the oligarch wars that followed the collapse of the USSR. This network has been active for decades as well. Its dynamics and Trump’s role are laid out in my book HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT.

5) Both networks contain fanatics of varying faiths who deploy rhetoric with apocalyptic overtones. Some are true messianic believers. Others exploit religion for financial and political gain.

7) Blackmail, threats, and bribery play a role in solidifying their power, but many officials are simply complicit, including in the Democratic Party.

8) The two networks may clash at some point, depending on whether their goal is American autocracy or collapse. Either way, Americans will get some form of mafia state kleptocracy, which is what we have already.

So. We’ve got that to look forward to.

Better to get a foreign take, so the BBC reports:

Secret Service agents have rushed former President Donald Trump off stage after what sounded like gunshots erupted at a rally in Pennsylvania. Footage showed him grimace and raise a hand to his right ear, before ducking as sharp cracks – apparently shots – broke out.

He was quickly swarmed by secret service agents and rushed off stage to a waiting vehicle. He raised a fist as he was bundled into the car. In a statement Trump’s campaign said he was “fine” and was being “checked out” at a local medical facility.

And now he’ll be able to make hay off it.

Trump’s Vice-President Mike Pence said he and his wife were praying for his former ally, adding that he urged “every American to join us”.

Pence’s former ally who tried to get him killed by the insurrectionists. “Hang Mike Pence,” he said.

Everything will get worse. We’re doomed.

When Ted Cruz gets it and the Dems don’t…

The Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday rejected the nomination of a progressive judge who approved the transfer of a 6’2″ transgender-identifying male child rapist to a women’s prison.

Just for the record – there is nothing “progressive” about trying to put a male rapist in a woman’s prison. If he needs protection from other men then deal with that, but not by transferring the danger to women.

Nominated by the Biden administration to join the federal bench for the Southern District of New York, Sarah Netburn allowed male sex offender July Justine Shelby to be sent to FMC Carswell, a female federal correctional facility in Fort Worth, Texas. Her order overturned the Bureau of Prisons’ rejection of his request for female housing.

What a sadistic thing to do.

Born William McClain, Shelby pleaded guilty in 1994 to molesting a nine-year-old boy and to raping a seventeen-year-old girl. After his release 18 years later, Shelby violated parole by using the internet in his apartment, landing himself in prison for another six years, until 2015. After being released again, Shelby underwent hormone therapy to begin transitioning to a female.

At the May hearing, Netburn testified that she found concerns that Shelby would sexually abuse female inmates “overblown.”

Something wrong with the arithmetic there, but anyway, seriously? Overblown? Would she like to be locked in a cell with him for a few days, see what happens?

Shelby was entered into administrative segregation recently for exposing himself to female prisoners, the Washington Free Beacon reported Wednesday.

Is that overblown?

Democratic senator Jon Ossoff broke with his party Wednesday to oppose the nomination of Netburn.

After Cruz pressed Netburn over her decision to move Shelby to live among women, current and former female inmates sounded the alarm over gender-inclusive prison housing policies in letters to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

“Most incarcerated women have already experienced sexual trauma and violence during our lives,” female former inmate Amie Ichikawa wrote to the committee in a letter sent by the Independent Women’s Forum (IWF) and obtained by National Review. “We are trying to heal and prepare to be productive citizens after serving out our sentences. Having men in our prison systems disrupts all of this. We fear for our safety.”

Thank you Jon Ossoff. The rest of you Dem senators – you’re despicable.

NPR takes care to insult women again, via a story about metals found in tampons.

Researchers have found toxic metals — including arsenic and lead — in over a dozen popular brands of tampons, raising questions about a menstrual hygiene product used by millions of Americans.

American whats? Dogs? Cars? Barbecue grills?

Researchers say the study marks an important first step in confirming the presence of toxic metals in tampons, which are used by an estimated 52% to 86% of menstruating people in the U.S.

Ah there we go. They start slowly and build. Americans instead of American women is a jab, and menstruating people is a smash in the head with a hammer.

They say more studies are needed to determine to what extent such metals might “leach out of tampons” and into peoples’ bodies. They’re calling not only for more research, but also for stronger regulations.

…

“We plan to evaluate the study closely, and take any action warranted to safeguard the health of consumers who use these products,” Hils added.

Ah that’s a good one – consumers. What kind of consumers? Shhhhhhhh.

Catherine Roberts, a health and science journalist at Consumer Reports who has written about tampons, says it’s more surprising that the question wasn’t investigated sooner.

“It’s in the most sensitive part of people’s bodies. It’s so close to us,” she says. “We use so many [tampons] over a lifetime. It’s just wild to me that this is so both so little researched and so little regulated.”

Of people’s bodies – so there goes the opportunity to discuss the ways women’s health is neglected or overlooked because women are still viewed as inferior.

People who menstruate may use more than 7,400 tampons over the course of their reproductive years, the study authors calculated, with each tampon staying in the vagina for several hours at a time.

In what vagina? The people’s vagina? Are vaginas like noses and kneecaps – everyone has them?

Dr. Nathaniel DeNicola, an OB-GYN who served as the environmental health expert for the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, says the more pressing question is not whether there are chemicals in tampons, but “when does it convert to a dangerous amount?”

Some of the metals found in the tampons — including copper, calcium, iron and zinc — are not only considered safe, but recommended for patients by many doctors, he notes. They would not be damaging in low amounts, but a cumulative amount could have a lasting effect on a person’s endocrine functions.

That’s an awkward piece of writing. The self-conscious swapping of “a person” for “a woman” creates a pointless clunker of a sentence.

It’s not clear from the study whether people are getting harmful amounts of each metal from tampons, DeNicola says.

Well it damn well is clear that half of “people” aren’t – the male half.

To Roberts, one of the main takeaways from the study is that the “organic label was clearly not a guarantee that these products would not have heavy metals.” So what are concerned shoppers supposed to do?

Ideally, she says, regulators would mandate heavy-metal testing for tampons to take some of the pressure off consumers.

Until then, she says, there are some measures that tampon users can take to try to reduce their exposure to chemicals in general.

Shoppers, consumers, tampon users – but never women. Never never never women. It’s a filthy word, and it must not be uttered.

DeNicola recommends relying on a combination of “third-party testing and some personal due diligence.” He says there are apps shoppers can use to scan product barcodes and see what chemicals they contain, which could be useful for personal care and feminine hygiene products.

In some cases, people might want to consider alternatives to tampons, such as pads or menstrual cups. The reusable cups have become increasingly popular in recent years, especially given their lower environmental impact compared to tampons.

Shoppers shoppers shoppers, people people people.

DeNicola notes that plastic from tampons is one of the biggest sources of waste worldwide (and that some brands are more eco-friendly than others). Roberts points out that even if they didn’t contain chemicals, tampons would still pose a risk of toxic shock syndrome, a rare but potentially life-threatening illness (wearers can reduce their risk by changing their tampons frequently).

Wearers?? You don’t wear tampons.

DeNicola stresses that this study doesn’t have him running to tell his patients not to use tampons at all.

And so we come to the end without ever using the word “women.” NPR is despicable.