Brighton and Hove News on that rally on Sunday:

A group of women took shelter in a shop when they were surrounded by dozens of protesters who followed them after they left a rally in Brighton yesterday (Sunday 23 June).

…

Several of those taking part in the rally yesterday complained that they were subject to aggressive abuse from about 200 protesters who mainly described themselves as trans rights activists.

Let Women Speak tweeted that Sussex Police had shown a “failure to act on multiple breaches of the peace, harassment and intimidation”, with footage on social media capturing several incidents including scuffles. And several of the women were alarmed to see and hear Sarah Jane Baker, also known as Alan Baker, with a megaphone in the ranks of the protesters. Baker spent 30 years in prison for kidnap and torture and later for attempted murder. The former Lewes inmate – pictured a few years ago carrying a sign saying “Kill JK Rowling” – was recalled to prison last year for breaching parole conditions.

But on Sunday there he was at the rally, merrily threatening women who dare to defend women’s rights.

One member of the audience said that many of those present were survivors of male sexual violence and abuse and were disappointed that the police had not provided better protection from harassment and intimidation. She said that the police had allowed the protesters – many of them men hiding their identity behind masks – to get too close and to keep up a menacing barrage of aggressive verbal abuse. She added that the police had protected the protesters’ freedom of speech and right to protest at the expense of the women’s freedom of speech and right to assemble for a peaceful rally.

Naturally. Women are stupid or malevolent or both; the only decent kind of woman is a trans one.

Wiltshire police are deranged.

A “person” was found guilty of rape. The court tried this “person” as a woman, even though he is of course a man. Women can’t rape. The police say that at the time of the “offence” – i.e. the rape – he was “living as a man.” What they mean is that he wasn’t yet pretending to be a woman. He was found guilty and remanded in custody. The victim of the rape is referred to as “they.”

Complete dog’s breakfast.

He’s horrified is he? Where’s he been all this time?

He says he’s horrified, yet he still says we have to “find a way through” this business of a man in the women’s changing room, staring at them while they undress. He says he’s horrified, yet he still says we’ve got to find a way through that treats trans people with respect first – before saying anything about the women who don’t want to take their clothes off in front of a staring man before they start their shifts as nurses. Why does he talk about “treating trans people with respect” first? Why don’t women ever get to be first? Why does a man’s desire to be in the room where women take their clothes off deserve any respect at all?

Man thrilled at opportunity to mangle women while playing rugby.

Female rugby players in Alberta, Canada, are expressing concerns for their safety after a male who only recently began to identify as a “woman” was permitted to join their team. The women say their club is more worried about “discrimination” lawsuits than their potential injuries.

Players for the Clanswomen, a female rugby team in the Clansmen Rugby Club (CRC) and under the jurisdiction of the Edmonton Rugby Club, told Reduxx they were only recently informed by a coach that Maeryn Gellhaus, 48, was allowed to join their team.

Several members of the Clanswomen, who are being kept anonymous for their protection, explained that they knew Gellhaus had previously played on a men’s team in the CRC before he began to identify as transgender. He also reportedly coaches a youth team in the CRC.

He only started “identifying” as female four months ago, and even that is only part-time. Thin end of the wedge innit. Men might as well just move to the women’s teams without bothering to claim to be trans.

The anonymous female players said that Gellhaus was allegedly informed that several of the women on the team were uncomfortable with his presence and worried about being injured playing with a male. Days later, Gellhaus took to Instagram again, complaining that some of the women had been less than accomodating to him.

“There are a lot of girls that have been absolutely amazing to me there. But there is an underlying feeling that some don’t want me there. Badly. It hasn’t been figured out yet. I’m trying to decide if it’s worth the struggle. I want to be celebrated, not tolerated,” he wrote.

He wants to be celebrated for endangering women and spoiling their sport. It’s all about him, you see.

Several of the women have approached Canada’s governing body for Rugby with concerns about safety, but were told that the club must follow the current guidance, which enables players to choose a team based on their self-identified gender “at both recreational and competitive levels.”

Rugby Canada regulations claim to “resolve gender identity and gender expression issues” via their discipline and complaints policy. The policy does not provide any mention of the safety of female players matched with or against males.

Pffff women’s safety – who cares?

Trump goes all ancient Rome on us.

As The New York Times reported, the Republican candidate also told his evangelical audience that he pitched starting a league for migrants to fight one another for sport.

Appearing at the Faith & Freedom Coalition’s conference in Washington on Saturday, Mr. Trump described migrants with the dehumanizing terms he often uses to refer to them, saying they were “tough,” “come from prisons” and are “nasty, mean.” Mr. Trump then said that he had suggested to Dana White, an ally of the former president’s who is the chief executive of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, “Why don’t you set up a migrant league of fighters?”

In fact, the former president seemed quite animated on the subject.

Well, sure, that’s the kind of thing that gets him animated.

Referring to Dana White, Trump told the audience, “I said, ‘Dana, I have an idea. Why don’t you set up a migrant league of fighters and have your regular league of fighters, and then you have the champion of your league — these are the greatest fighters in the world — fight the champion of the migrants.’ I think the migrant guy might win, that’s how tough they are. He didn’t like that idea too much, but actually, it’s not the worst idea I’ve ever had. No, it’s, these are tough people, these people are tough, and they’re nasty, mean.”

Unlike Trump of course, who is empathetic and generous and compassionate.

Trump tells the same stupid story all over again. To demonstrate that he’s not rambling.

Men respecting women:

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.

***

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.

…

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.