Eeeesh. No it’s not.

No it’s not like that at all. It’s like asking if pretend cats are cats or if fake cars are cars. “Trans” isn’t comparable to “blue” or “tabby” in this attempted analogy, because “trans” means “not real.” Prisoners of the ideology don’t define it that way of course, but all the same that’s what it means.

It’s not a humdrum adjective that simply names an attribute of a person or thing. It’s not like small or big, polite or rude, nice or nasty, young or old, bright or dim, fast or slow. It’s a peculiar adjective that means something like “not really” or “wink-wink.” It has nothing to do with tautologies.

That’s depressing.

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? at Miscellany Room.

A local greenspace was the site for a Pride event today. We went through, checking out the vendors. The last time I felt this out of place was back in the days when I used to do wedding photography, when I ended up shooting a wedding where the parents and pastor did the whole Evangelical, loud, praying over the couple routine. Most of the church weddings I shot tended to be in more staid, bland, formalized, un-zealous traditions, which I found less jarring to my atheist sensibilities. I’ve usually found unbridled, vocal, demonstrative piety disconcerting, partly because displays of delusional thinking, however sincere, are kinda creepy. More creepy because of the sincerity. At this particular wedding, I felt like there was a big, red, neon “UNBELIEVER!” sign blinking above my head. Well, I felt the glow of that long dark sign warming my pate once again as I made my way around the park amongst so many True Believers, the internal monologue of my critical disbelief, and my distaste for trans ideology’s parasitism on Gay Rights kept carefully away from my tongue, like a dog on a halty. (Actually, it wasn’t that hard to keep quiet; I simply observed while channeling my Inner Anthropologist.) I’m both insufficiently curmudgeonly, and too cowardly to Make a Scene; I still have to live in my neighbourhood. I’d rather not be branded the Village Asshole.

The vast majority of flags on display were the forced-teaming Pride-Progress flag, with precious few examples of the original Pride Rainbow flag in evidence. Mission accomplished, trans activism! There were a number of “licorice allsorts” flags that have been cobbled together for and foisted upon the various SOGI micro-demographics/snowflake identities, earnestly carried or worn (presumaby) by members of these subdivisions of specialness. I’m not going to waste any of my time sorting out other people’s investment in (and marketing to) the different shades of narcissistic self-indulgeance to work them all out. I’ll leave that to British Rail.

I saw a number of T-shirts that pissed me off:

“Gender Affirming Health Care Saves Lives” It isn’t “health care” and it doesn’t “save” anybody. Way to promote suicidal ideation and emotional blackmail! So much untruth and bullying in so few words; you have to admire the economy of effort. Slow clap.

“Protect Trans Kids” featuring a tasteful floral wreath and a knife. At least it didn’t show an assault rifle, but we’re talking about Canada here, so a bladed weapon is threat enough to get the point across: “This is not a Request. ” But what it’s really saying is “Protect the Transing of Kids.” The knife is just added incentive and intimidation. If they were actually interested in child welfare and safeguarding, they would be against the very thing they’re promoting. I’m constantly surprised and disappointed at the level of cognitive dissonance that some people can tolerate. One of the unfortunate consequences of “educating myself” by consulting heretical sources. Oh well. My version of the shirt would say “Protect ‘Trans’ Kids”, or better yet, “Protect Kids From Being Transed.”

And then there’s my favourite (which I hadn’t seen before), “You’ll have to go through Me” printed in the trans colours, with the wearer eagerly pledging, in anticipatory, post-Niemöllerian solidarity, protection (unto death?) for trans folk, reinforcing the dishonest Official Narrative that Trans anybody is some sort of helpless, powerless, threatened, beleaguered, and endangered minority in imminent danger of being shovelled into the ovens. If you’ve got events that are sponsored by multiple corporations, and all levels and branches of government, all of which are eagerly pushing acceptance of your agenda, and splashing your flag and its colours everywhere, YOU ARE NOT HELPLESS, OR POWERLESS. Quite the opposite. You’ve already won; now you’re just claiming “victimhood” and fighting dirty to protect your ill-gotten gains, gifted or taken in back room deals to which women (amongst others), were not privy. You’re not the ones they’re out to get. You’re not the target of all of this corporate and government effort and attention: I am. Cue that neon sign.

How many of these people who have bought the narrative (along with the T-shirts) know they’re also throwing their support behind the mutilation and sterilization of children, the erosion and violation of women’s boundaries, the destruction of fairness in sports for girls and women, the imprisonment of violent male predators with women, the suppression of free speech, and other illiberal, ideological positions that the demands of trans “rights” entail? Buy one lie, buy them all. Easy enough to do if you don’t look to closely at what’s in the package, and if you unwittingly outsource your ethical judgements to dishonest narcissists. But once you’ve bought it, it’s yours. Do you keep it, or admit your mistake? How far will you ride the sunk-cost fallacy? How many of these logical consequences of trans ideology would they explicitly defend in so many words if put to the test? Did they know they were signing up for all of this when they accepted the Drag Queen’s shilling?

A thing I often wonder: why is the subjunctive so taboo in the UK even when it’s necessary for meaning?

I ask because I’ve just happened on an example of the kind of thing.

From a statement issued by Durham University:

While individuals and groups within the University community may express lawful views on any issue, we insist that this is done in a safe and respectful way.

See that’s not what they mean. By not using the subjunctive they said something they’re not trying to say. They say they’re insisting that this is in fact done in a safe and respectful way, when what they’re trying to say is that they insist it should be done in a safe and respectful way. It’s a counter-factual subjunctive. Why is it anathema?

Slowly, inch by inch, institutions are rediscovering that people can’t change sex even if a piece of paper says they have done so.

The equalities watchdog is urgently reviewing its guidance for employers on single-sex jobs as women’s refuges are “routinely” and “unlawfully” advertising positions to male-born applicants.

The Equality Act has exemptions which allow employers to restrict a job role to a particular sex if they can show it is an “occupational requirement” and is “a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim”. Under these rules, it is lawful for women’s domestic violence and rape charities to advertise female-only positions.

But there’s a catch!

However, the feminist campaign group Fair Play For Women (FPFW) has alerted the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) to nine different charities which allow men who identify as women to apply for jobs reserved for female candidates.

Because guess what: this is what happens when large mobs of people shout “TRANS WOMEN ARE WOMEN” and way too many people nod solemnly in agreement.

When you make it taboo to say that men are not women, you’re going to get men applying for and getting jobs reserved for women. That’s why we’ve been saying men are not women all these years.

Dr Nicola Williams, director of FPFW, said fresh guidance on this issue was needed because many organisations are “misinterpreting” equality laws.

She said: “The Equality Act has exemptions which allow employers to lawfully restrict a job role when necessary, such as with positions in women’s domestic violence refuges, to people of the female sex.

“This does not include people whose sex is male even if they identify as women and have the protected characteristic of gender reassignment.”

Because people whose sex is male are male. It doesn’t matter how they “identify.”

“But domestic violence and rape charities are now routinely misinterpreting this law because of the mistaken belief that they must still invite trans women to apply for female-only jobs for fear of being accused of discrimination.”

And because men refuse to be told “No.”

And in January this year Dundee Women’s Aid was criticised for publishing a job advert for a women’s support domestic abuse practitioner, which encouraged applicants who “identify as women” to apply for a female-only position.

Arguably men who “identify as women” are worse candidates for such a job than men who just are men. Men who claim to be women are performing a kind of contempt for women by claiming to be women. It’s a hostile act. This gets veiled because of the many deluded women who cheer them on and call the rest of us rude names.

I’m nostalgic for the days when we didn’t sell T shirts for little girls urging them to Bend Over.

The New Republic reminds us that what Trump is doing is not legitimate response to rivals but something else entirely.

The idea that Trump should pursue “revenge” and “retribution” for prosecutions is everywhere on the right. After a federal judge ordered Steve Bannon to surrender to prison, numerous MAGA influencers, including the MAGA God King himself, angrily vowed such payback. Republicans have said Trump should “fight fire with fire” (Senator Marco Rubio) and that GOP district attorneys should declare open season on Democrats (Stephen Miller). Trump, of course, has offered many versions of this, including to Dr. Phil and Hannity.

In the media, this story tends to be framed as follows: Will Trump seek “revenge” for his legal travails, or won’t he? But that framing unwittingly lets Trump set the terms of this debate. It implies that he is vowing to do to Democrats what was done to him.

Criminals don’t get to “seek revenge” for being convicted of crimes. That’s not how any of this works.

But that’s not what Trump is actually threatening. Whereas Trump is being prosecuted on the basis of evidence that law enforcement gathered before asking grand juries to indict him, he is expressly declaring that he will prosecute President Biden and Democrats solely because this is what he endured, meaning explicitly that evidence will not be the initiating impulse.

Nor will it be the ongoing impulse or the terminating impulse. It won’t have anything to do with it.

You might think this distinction is obvious—one most voters will grasp instinctually. But why would they grasp this? It’s not uncommon to encounter news stories about Trump’s threats—see here, here, or here—that don’t explain those basic contours of the situation. Such stories often don’t take the elementary step of explaining the fundamental difference between bringing prosecutions in keeping with what evidence and the rule of law dictate and bringing them as purported “retaliation.” Why would casual readers simply infer that prosecutions against Trump are legally predicated while those he is threatening are not?

Conclusion: don’t let Trump frame the subject this way. Correct it every damn time.

Oh good GOD.

How do they get this way? How do they not see it?

The woman asks him why he said, in connection with Rosie Duffield, that “only women have a cervix” is “something that shouldn’t be said” and “is not right.”

“Well,” he says, “look, what I said then and on other occasions is simply that I do not like the way that this becomes so quickly a toxic conversation. I want the conversation to be had with respect…I think about that poor girl Brianna who was murdered and the terrible circumstances of that death…” [clip ends]

Sir, sir, are you aware that women get murdered? Has no one told you that? How does the murder of a teenage boy explain why women shouldn’t say that only women have a cervix?

You will sign the Loyalty Oath or else.

Staff at a top university say they feel coerced to subscribe to a Stonewall agenda by signing a pledge to oppose transphobia and demonstrate “allyship” by sharing their pronouns.

Exeter University last week asked its academics to sign the “inclusive practitioners commitment” produced by its “LGBTQ+ colleague and student” group.

Well that will be why they feel coerced, then – the fact that their employer “asked” them to sign a pledge to believe in bullshit.

The online document requests staff make six pledges to prove they are “the kind of person that LGBTQ+ people can confide in and feel safe around”.

Isn’t it fascinating that universities have never “requested” (actually demanded) that staff make pledges to prove they are the kind of person women can feel safe around?

These include promising to “affirm trans staff and students” by using their chosen names and pronouns. They are then encouraged to seek out LGBTQ+ people’s contributions to their teaching subject and ensure when they refer to trans and non-binary experts they “respect their identities, names and pronouns”.

Lecturers are also told to “educate” themselves about how anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment can be perpetuated through “micro-aggressions, dog whistles and talking points”.

Honestly, how does this happen? How do adult people running universities take this childish drivel seriously? Why aren’t they all rolling their eyes and throwing it in the recycle bin?

In addition, they are asked to promise that they are “firmly against” transphobia, bi-erasure, acephobia (discrimination against asexual people) and intersexism, a term for prejudice against people with variations in their sex characteristics. Finally, staff are asked to ensure their “allyship” is visible by sharing their own pronouns where appropriate.

Who is in charge of all this asking?

Exeter University is part of the Stonewall Workplace Equality Index, which ranks employers on how LGBTQ friendly their working environments are. It is also a member of the charity’s controversial Diversity Champions Scheme, which has been criticised for encouraging employers to stifle free speech and debate in relation to trans issues.

It sounds more like a daycare facility than a university.

I saw this

Shall we sample? Let’s.

Page 1:

Menstruation is defined as “the monthly shedding of the lining of [the] uterus”
(Cleveland Clinic, 2019, para. 2). Although menstruation is often considered in the
context of the experiences of cisgender women (Brantelid et al., 2014; DeMaria et al.,
2020; Donmall, 2013; Jackson & Falmagne, 2013; Mason et al., 2013), many scholars
have begun to critique the idea of menstruation as an experience unique to women and a
mark of womanhood.

Menstruation is defined as that but it also is that. People who’ve done it can confirm. (They’re all women, by the way.) Knowing what menstruation is isn’t just a matter of looking in the dictionary. It’s not a word like “affable” or “landscape” or “confusion.” Just for one thing, it’s part of a process that results in all of us. Without it none of these fucking fools would be here gurgling about the definition of menstruation and none of us would be here wanting to smack them.

No real scholars “have begun to critique the idea of menstruation as an experience unique to women.” It’s too stupid. Scholars would spot that right off. Even scholars in astrophysics or church history would.

It’s not an “idea” that only women menstruate. It’s reality. People didn’t sit around and dream it up; it’s reality.

But this pile of tripe is for a degree of Master of Arts, so I guess respect for truth has no role. Make no mistake though: this is ridiculous contemptible childish garbage. A university that takes it seriously should close its doors.

Scholars have promoted a more feminist and gender-inclusive conceptualization of menstruation and have acknowledged that not all women menstruate and not all who menstruate are women.

It’s not a club. It’s not a party. It’s not a class outing to the botanical gardens. It’s part of a biological process essential for making new humans. It doesn’t need to be “inclusive” and it can’t be. Trying to be more “inclusive” about it is pointless and absurd and childish.

Page 2 is just as stupid. I stopped reading there.

There’s a thing called Clarks Village, for (it says) Somerset Outlet Shopping. Lots of stuff to buy, for up to 60% off! Whoopee! Also have you heard about our lord and savior the things you can do to support the LGBTQIA+ community? HAVE you?

Wait there’s more. It has a Pride Tree! And a whole long list of things you can do!

This year, the fabulous Bristol Pride Day takes place on Saturday 13th July on The Downs. A Pride event with the community at its heart, international headliners, and all without the high ticket price, Bristol Pride is determined to keep Pride accessible for everyone that wants to celebrate diversity, champion inclusivity, and protest prejudice. This year, The Human League is headlining the main stage, along with tons of other fantastic acts.

There are various ways to support Bristol Pride, including buying a Pride Supporter Wristband, which gets you free bus travel and other benefits on the day, and by online donations. Buy your supporter wristband and see how else you can help by visiting the website.

Surely, you think, I’ve messed up and found the wrong page somehow. Nope: this is an outlet store that moonlights as the Somerset edition of Pink News.

It has tips. Tips on what? Silly question. How to be a better ally, of course.

1. Call out homophobic and transphobic behaviour when you see it, if it is safe to do so. For example, correct your friends or family if they’re using outdated terms or inform a member of staff if you hear abusive language on public transport.
2. Use inclusive language to help everyone feel united. For example, address a group of people with “Hi everybody” instead of “Hi ladies and gentlemen”. It’s a subtle change in phrasing that makes a big difference.
3. Normalise the use of pronouns, such as ‘he/him’, ‘she/her’ and ‘they/them’. Adding pronouns to your email signature or social media profile helps to create a more welcoming environment for transgender and non-binary people.

The “use of pronouns” has been normalised as long as the language has existed. We all use he and him, she and her, they and them, every single day, because they come up in ordinary conversation. How much more normal do you want “you” and “we” to get?

1. Expand your knowledge! There are plenty of educational resources online. To start, you could look up a glossary of common LGBTQIA+ terms to ensure you’re speaking to those around you in the most respectful way. We also recommend reading about the incredible history of LGBTQIA+ activism and the struggles the community has faced, to understand why Pride month is so important.
2. Show up in person. Find out about events, marches and volunteering opportunities to support your local Pride organisations. Taking part in our Tree of Pride is a great start!
3. Don’t make assumptions. Lazy and incorrect assumptions are damaging to the LGBTQIA+ community. For example, guessing somebody’s sexual preferences, assuming a gay man has certain interests or assuming someone identifies as a woman due to the way they’re dressed can be very offensive and upsetting. Your intentions may be positive, but the outcome might not be.

Oops time’s up! The outlet’s closing. Sorry you didn’t have time to shop. See you next year!

Pragna Patel on why religious courts are bad for women.

On 1 June 2024, the world’s first Sikh court will open in London. This demands our urgent attention. For many years, I – as the co-director of Project Resist, and the former director of Southall Black Sisters – along with groups such as One Law for All have campaigned against the growth of religious courts because we believe they are tied to a wave of religious fundamentalism targeting the rights and freedoms of women.

Let’s face it: one of the core claims of most (or all) religions is the inferiority hence subordination of women. A goddy court that doesn’t think women are lesser beings is unlikely in the extreme.

The use of religious laws to regulate minority women’s lives is not only discriminatory, it is immensely harmful in a context where domestic abuse and related femicides of South Asian and other minority women remain persistently high.

The court presents itself as a professional, quasi-legal body, willing to adhere to formal legal rules of engagement. But so far, spokespeople justifying its existence have indicated a much more worrying agenda.

On 25 April 2024, Baldip Singh, a founder and spokesperson for the Sikh court, pointed to the so-called failure of the secular courts to take account of religious values in a case concerning a divorced Sikh woman who, as the primary carer of her young son, supported his decision to cut his hair in defiance of the wishes of his father (her ex-husband). The stance represents a fight for the preservation of the father’s rights that echoes a wider ideological battle, being fought by abusive men, about how the family courts are biased against them. The all too familiar demand for respect for religious values, regardless of the circumstances, is a worrying patriarchal precedent.

Because religious values are patriarchal values. God is a dude.

When many minority women seek to escape abuse, they are subjected to pressure and coercion to stay silent, and tolerate the abuse for the sake of keeping their family unit intact. Their profoundly unequal status, coupled with an unequal power distribution over knowledge of legal rights, will make it even more difficult to reject attempts at mediation, or to complain when decisions are made against their interests. The formal UK legal system allows women to obtain legal advice and representation in compliance with the rule of law and principles of fairness. However imperfect, that is a stark contrast to religious courts.

Gods hate women.

Awkward.

Now that Donald Trump is a convicted felon, his list of countries to visit has gotten much shorter.

Trump was found guilty on Thursday of 34 counts of falsifying records in an effort to keep adult film star Stormy Daniels quiet about an affair that occurred in the 2000s. That means certain freedoms Mr Trump once enjoyed may be out of his reach — and could have a serious effect on his ability to carry out his presidential duties, including travelling to foreign countries.

Nearly 40 nations – including Canada and the UK – have strict policies when it comes to allowing individuals with criminal records across their borders, and barring a special accommodation, Trump would be held to those same standards. 

It’s not quite as gratifying as it sounds, because the Independent goes on to clarify that the bar to felons is mostly optional. The nearly 40 nations can exclude him as a felon, but most of them don’t have to. It would be better if they had to.

The lack of gender is your real gender.

Hey don’t yell at me! I’m just sharing the wisdom.

Our book is called Real Gender for two reasons. The first is to emphasize our conviction that the gender (or lack thereof) that one lives or feels authentically is one’s real gender, regardless of whether it matches the gender one was assigned at birth.

The lack of gender is one’s real gender.

That’s a universalizable claim, by the way. The lack of hair is one’s real hair. The lack of teeth is one’s real teeth. The lack of a brain is one’s real brain – as demonstrated by these two.

Excuse me?

The Canadian Cancer Society is apologizing for using the term “cervix” on a web page for transgender and non-binary people assigned female at birth.

On the page dedicated to cervical cancer screenings for members of the LGBTQ+ community, the charitable organization explains in a disclaimer they “recognize that many trans men and non-binary people may have mixed feelings about or feel distanced from words like ‘cervix.’”

They probably have “mixed” feelings about words like “cancer” too; so what? Is the Canadian Cancer Society going to change its name to “Canadian Owie Society”?

The charity acknowledged in a section titled “Words Matter” that some members of the community may prefer to use other terms such as “front hole.”

Yes, words do matter, so why has no one told the Canadian Owie Society that “hole” is a hostile contemptuous name for women? That referring to female genitalia as a “hole” is contemptuous and hostile?

“We recognize the limitations of the words we’ve used while also acknowledging the need for simplicity,” the Canadian Cancer Society wrote. “Another reason we use words like ‘cervix’ is to normalize the reality that men can have these body parts too.”

No they can’t. Next question?

Originally a comment by Artymorty on While Tatchell rages.

The left walked right into this, and they’re so entrenched, we’re seeing a mass exodus to the right among the very youngest cohort of voters and young adults.

There seems to have been a delay of a few years between cause and effect, when the left went all-in on radical gender ideology, and the reaction among the electorate to it.

Well, it’s been a few years, the reaction is starting to manifest among the masses, and I fear the left is about to discover that it’s a MASSIVE rejection, and it will all be too little, too late for them.

And it breaks my heart, becuase there are global, universal, grand matters that the right are woefully short-sighted about. And in general, I just can’t bring myself to shift to the right. Trump and that madness aside, there are fundamental ideological views, and even personality traits, that are preferred by the right over the left, that I just absolutely find to be less informed, less balanced, less agreeable, than those on the left — or at least the left of my principles, if not at all the mess of the real-world left, with its witch-hunts and its pronoun madness…

Strange and scary times…

I hate it that the Tories are better on women’s rights than Labour is.

Kemi Badenoch has said the Conservatives will change the Equality Act to rewrite the definition of sex and allow organisations to bar transgender women from single-sex spaces, including hospital wards and sports events. The party will make clear that the protected characteristic of sex means biological sex, enabling those who wish to bar male-bodied people from organisations or activities to do so.

Or to put it less pejoratively, enabling women who want organizations and activities just for women to have them. It’s not that women have a deep perverse longing to “bar” men from things, it’s that at some times for some purposes we want women-only orgs and acts. The point is not “no men” but “women only.”

“Whether it is rapists being housed in women’s prisons, or instances of men playing in women’s sports where they have an unfair advantage, it is clear that public authorities and regulatory bodies are confused about what the law says on sex and gender and when to act – often for fear of being accused of transphobia, or not being inclusive,” Badenoch said.

Confused or just plain hell bent on destroying everything women have built up. It’s not all just innocent confusion.

Tatchell of course is all-in with the contempt for women.

News from the front:

A UK trans activist found guilty of sending threatening messages to author JK Rowling and Labour MP Rosie Duffield has now been sentenced. Glenn Mullen, 31, avoided jail as his eight-week prison sentence was suspended for two years.

Mullen, a Manchester-based trans activist, was arrested and charged with issuing violent threats to the two women which he sent in January of last year. 

And that’s why we’re doing as little as possible about them.

While police initially refused to comment on his arrest, they later confirmed that Mullen was behind a series of violent messages sent from a social media account named “gaymon de vaslayra.” The threats were issued just ahead of a planned women’s rights demonstration in Glasgow, and included Mullen posting audio recordings of himself threatening the women in the Gaelic language. X users translated the audio, revealing the nature of the threats.

In one audio, Mullen threatened Member of Parliament Rosie Duffield, making a statement which was roughly translated to: “I am going to see Rosie Duffield at the bar with a big gun. I hate her so much. Many thanks.” Mullen sent additional verbal audio threats to Harry Potter author JK Rowling, where he similarly spoke in Gaelic and said: “I’m going to kill JK Rowling with a big hammer. JK Rowling is very horrible, and I hate her so much.”

All this rage and hatred and longing to kill because women don’t agree that men are women if they say they are.

Mullen admitted to the two charges of conveying threatening messages, contrary to the Malicious Communications Act. After Mullen was bailed for sentencing, Westminster chief magistrate Paul Goldspring said that Mullen would get credit for his early guilty plea, but declined to remand him to immediate custody. Goldspring ultimately agreed that the threats occurred in “isolation,” and that Mullen had “strong views about gender equality. Quite appropriately so.”

Ah, well there you go then. Mullen is right that these two women who talk are bad bad bad people, so Mullen didn’t really do anything wrong.

The UK government issued a review thingy back in March about diversity and cohesion and similar feel-good words that clash with each other. It makes for deeply weird reading because of its total failure to make clear what it’s talking about.

The theme is something it dubs “freedom-restricting harassment” or (wait for it) frh for short.

Victims of freedom-restricting harassment suffer devastating impacts yet are often not treated as victims or offered the support they need. The impact on the religious studies teacher at Batley Grammar School provides a harrowing example.

As an in-depth victim case study and for the first time since the incident occurred, we reviewed the case of the religious studies (RS) teacher at Batley Grammar School who was forced into hiding in March 2021 following accusations of blasphemy. Having delivered an educational lesson on promoting fundamental British values, he faced an online and offline campaign of intimidation and abuse. Threats and harassment included incitement to violence against both him and his family.

Notice anything missing?

The specifics. The specifics are carefully left out. The specifics are carefully hidden, kept secret, tacitly denied. Forced into hiding by whom? Accusations of blasphemy from whom? Blasphemy in terms of what religion? Who was behind the campaign? Who was threatening and harassing?

You probably won’t be surprised to learn that we are never told. The specifics are carefully concealed…which makes the whole report worthless. How absurd.

We know why they do it of course. They don’t want to incite “Islamophobia.” But that’s just it, isn’t it. That’s the problem. Islam has a bug up its ass about purported “blasphemy,” and way too many of its adherents are way too eager to murder people for what they consider “blasphemy.” Post-war UK governments seeking cheap labor encouraged immigration from former colonies which happened to have huge populations of Muslims. Not all of those Muslims gave up their ideas about “blasphemy,” as became all too clear when Salman Rushdie had to go into hiding.

But it doesn’t do to say so. Result: a report that tries to talk about intolerance and harassment without ever mentioning the elephant in the sock drawer.

It hints at it briefly, but still carefully without naming it.

There was a considerable lack of leadership by the agencies named above. They should have issued clear messages that threats, harassment and abuse would not be tolerated under any circumstances. Nor was there any clear condemnation of those engaged in such behaviour who were creating an intimidatory and threatening climate. There was a disproportionate concern for not causing offence to the religious sensibilities of those who, unaware of the facts, chose to engage in intimidation and harassment.

Yes but which religious sensibilities? Sssshhhh – we’re the government; we mustn’t say it.

We heard of more cases of self-appointed ‘community faith leaders’ aggressively interfering in everyday teaching at some schools in Batley and creating a climate of fear. This appears to suggest there is a wider cultural problem in the area that is not being adequately addressed.

Yes but what community? What faith? What culture?

It’s so pathetic that they refuse to say.

Jolyon Maugham has a strange tale to tell. Very strange. Hard to credit kind of strange. Almost as if he’s making it up level strange.

Really. There’s been a massive increase in deaths among young trans people. A massive increase from…zero? I ask because people who investigate the blackmailing “trans kids will kill themselves!!!” claims report that they find nothing. There is no detectable epidemic of suicide among young trans people. But maybe Maugham doesn’t mean suicide, maybe he means general deaths, deaths of any kind? That the NHS is somehow concealing?

Well, he put it in writing, so it must be true.