A piquant headline:

Former SNP equalities officer who wanted to ‘beat up terfs’ convicted of sexual assault

To be clear, it’s not that he wanted to beat up terfs convicted of sexual assault. No. It’s that he has been convicted of sexual assault. Laughably titled “equalities officer” wanted to beat up women who know that men are not women, and oh gee whiz what do you know it turns out he’s been doing some beating up himself.

A former SNP equalities officer who told how he wanted to “beat the fuck” out of gender critical feminists has been convicted of sexually assaulting six young adults.

Cameron Downing, who was an official in the SNP’s London branch, preyed on multiple victims and threatened to make rape allegations against one man if he refused sexual contact with him, the High Court in Edinburgh heard.

That is, I take it, if he the one man refused sexual contact with him the “equalities officer.” If only each man had special bejeweled pronouns it would be clearer. Anyway, point is, putative equalities boffin turns out to be not very equality-minded.

The 24-year-old, who identifies as non-binary, has been pictured at an SNP conference with former first minister Nicola Sturgeon and took part in a Pride March alongside Karen Adam, the SNP MSP and convenor of Holyrood’s equalities committee.

I have to wonder why Sturgeon would have a 24-year-old equalities officer in the first place. Surely a little experience plus maturity is desirable in candidates for jobs of that kind.

His conduct online has been criticised by JK Rowling, after he wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that 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.”

Oh that guy. I remember that tweet. Says it all, doesn’t it. The trans thing isn’t really a liberation movement, it’s a pretext and a motivation for raging at women and getting props for doing so. The whole point is really just hating women with such a passion.

Police Scotland launched a probe into Downing and discovered that he had preyed on victims across Scotland in a course of conduct that began when he was only 16.

…

A female victim, now 24, told how he had made abusive comments to her at a New Year Party in 2018 about her weight, which caused her to get drunk and become sick.

Just the fella to be an equalities officer, yeah?

[O]n Friday afternoon, after two days of deliberations, jurors found Downing, of Willowbrae, Edinburgh, guilty on charges of sexual and physical assault. Judge Alison Stirling remanded Downing in custody, rejecting his lawyer’s application for bail. She told him: “Your status has changed.  I will adjourn sentence to obtain a criminal justice social work report and you will be remanded in custody.”

Equalities officer no more.

Trump failed to impress a roomful of greedy CEOs.

Former President Donald Trump failed to impress everyone in a room full of top CEOs Thursday at the Business Roundtable’s quarterly meeting, multiple attendees told CNBC.

“Trump doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” said one CEO who was in the room, according to a person who heard the executive speaking. The CEO also said Trump did not explain how he planned to accomplish any of his policy proposals, that person said.

Several CEOs “said that [Trump] was remarkably meandering, could not keep a straight thought [and] was all over the map,” CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin reported Friday on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”

Dementia speeding up?

Julie Bindel on Labour’s contempt for women:

The Labour Party has managed to do it again: declare a war on women whilst attempting to appear to be very female friendly. The party claims it will halve violence against women and girls and make the streets safer for women to walk, even as it edges towards self-identification for men that claim to be female. What this translates into is fear and danger for women. 

They can’t halve violence against women and girls and make the streets safer for women to walk just by flapping their hands, or saying words, or looking solidarityish. They sure as hell can’t do it by making it easier for men to invade women’s spaces and take women’s jobs.

Starmer, who goes back and forth on whether or not a woman can have a penis, and who gave the appearance of standing by as a Labour MP Rosie Duffield was bullied and defamed within the party he leads, is now proposing to “modernise, simplify and reform” the “intrusive and outdated” gender recognition system.

You know what else is intrusive? Men in women’s spaces, taking women’s prizes, talking over women, telling women to stfu, calling women names, getting women punished and fired and banned.

The Labour Party has always had a woman problem, but right now, after years of this nonsense, I am veering towards thinking that it hates women. The bearded brocalists shilling for trans rights are misogynists wearing a rainbow flag. For decades, women have put up with the sexism within the party, from the unbridled, unreconstructed “beer and sandwiches” culture of the 1970s, through to the modern day version we are experiencing right now.

There was a time when we thought we’d won that fight, that men got it at last. Silly silly us.

It’s a god damn outrage.

Politico reports:

A federal judge has temporarily blocked the Education Department’s final Title IX rule, which prohibits discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation.

What is “discrimination based on gender identity”? Why, it’s knowing that men are not women, of course. It’s the most discrimminy thing there is.

Western District of Louisiana Chief Judge Terry Doughty in an order Thursday declared that Title IX, a federal education law that bars sex-based discrimination, “was written and intended to protect biological women from discrimination.”

Why? Because women are the ones who need that protection. It’s not men who are passed over for promotions, paid less for the same job, sexually harassed at work.

“Such purpose makes it difficult to sincerely argue that, at the time of enactment, ‘discrimination on the basis of sex’ included gender identity, sex stereotypes, sexual orientation, or sex characteristics,” Doughty, a Trump appointee, wrote. “Enacting the changes in the Final Rule would subvert the original purpose of Title IX.”

Why? Because it would protect men (who pretend to be women) at the expense of women.

I hate it that Trump-appointed judges are the ones who get this right.

More on sharksbatteriesgate from Tom Nichols in The Atlantic:

Trump is obviously unfit—and something is profoundly wrong with a political environment in which he can now say almost anything, no matter how weird, and his comments will get a couple of days of coverage and then a shrug, as if to say: Another day, another Trump rant about sharks.

Yes, but that’s been true all along. He’s worse now but he was terrible from the start.

In Las Vegas on Sunday, Trump went off-script—I have to assume that no competent speechwriter would have drafted this—and riffed on the important question of how to electrocute a shark while one attacks. He had been talking, he claims, to someone about electric boats: “I say, ‘What would happen if the boat sank from its weight and you’re in the boat, and you have this tremendously powerful battery, and the battery’s now underwater, and there’s a shark that’s approximately 10 yards over there?’”

As usual, Trump noted how much he impressed his interlocutor with his very smart hypothetical: “And he said, ‘Nobody ever asks this question,’ and it must be because of MIT, my relationship to MIT. Very smart.”

His relationship to MIT? He doesn’t have a “relationship” to or with or around or about MIT. He and the shark and the battery did not all attend MIT together. MIT never even sat next to Trump in the cafeteria.

Sure, it seems funny—Haha! Uncle Don is telling that crazy shark story again!—until we remember that this man wants to return to a position where he would hold America’s secrets, be responsible for the execution of our laws, and preside as the commander in chief of the most powerful military in the world. A moment that seems like oddball humor should, in fact, terrify any American voter, because this behavior in anyone else would be an instant disqualification for any political office, let alone the presidency. (Actually, a delusional, rambling felon known to have owned weapons would likely fail a security check for even a visit to the Oval Office.)

We know. We know we know we know. And it doesn’t seem all that funny, either. It’s sort of funny in a grotesque nightmarish way, but it’s far more disgusting and enraging than it is genuinely funny.

Word is that Trump’s dementia is rapidly getting worse.

When more than 500 licensed mental health professions—including best-selling authors and well-respected psychologists—sign a petition warning that Donald Trump has clear signs of dementia, you would think corporate media would cover the story. But of course that would conflict with the corporate media’s non-stop narrative that President Biden is the one with cognitive issues.

But thankfully that has not deterred Dr. John Gartner–the founder of “Duty to Warn” and a prominent psychologist who was a contributor to the New York Times bestselling book “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President”—from raising alarm bells.

So Dean Obeidallah had a conversation with Gartner.

…with Trump back in the spotlight, Gartner saw deeply alarming new symptoms prompting him to jump back into action. To put it bluntly, Gartner stated that with today’s Trump: “We see clear signs of dementia.” 

The Doctor explained that since Trump left office, there has been an obvious acceleration in his cognitive deterioration. For example, “now he can’t get through a rally without committing one of these” tell-tale signs of dementia, such as saying the incorrect word or “combining or mixing up people and generations.”

I’d agree that it’s obvious. I’ve been thinking of it, in my amateurish way, as his being more stupid, but if he’s more demented rather than more stupid, I stand corrected.

But it’s not just Gartner raising alarm bells. Others who have signed the “Duty To Warn” petition are doing the same, such as psychologist Michael Tansey, Ph.D. who wrote about Trump, “Recent shocking video displayed what appears to be signs of a serious advancing dementia which have worsened in recent months. That will inflame his underlying psychological vulnerability to rogue rage, extreme recklessness, and impulsive and violent action.”

So definitely let’s put him in charge of the nukes again.

Dr. Michael Bader, a psychologist, explained, “This is not just ‘rambling.’ Trump evidences a type of cognitive impairment seen in dementia.” He highlighted Trump’s symptoms that led to this conclusion: “word salad (incoherence), ‘loose associations’ (a lack of connection between ideas), impairments of memory, and language problems (mis-pronouncing words or making up words that don’t exist).”

Alarmingly, as Gartner warns, Trump will only get worse—especially given the stress of the campaign and his criminal woes. “Now we’re noticing deterioration almost every day,” marked by Trump becoming more erratic, impulsive and with increasingly incomprehensible speech, Gartner noted. He added, “I honestly believe that if Trump were to get reelected that he would become completely incapacitated in office.”

I see no reason to think that’s unlikely.

The Telegraph reports:

A play that criticises JK Rowling’s views on gender is struggling to cast women with 90 actresses so far rejecting parts.

Good! Serves it right!

The stage production, which is set to debut at the Edinburgh Fringe, has already caused outrage over a working title which labelled the gender-critical Harry Potter author a cunt.

Yeah women who defend women’s rights are such cunts, aren’t we.

The production is yet to cast any of the female roles, including that of Rowling herself. The part of Harry Potter film star Emma Watson has also been repeatedly turned down, and around 90 actresses have refused to take part in the project amid concerns over its critique of Rowling.

Calling women “cunts” is not a “critique” of said women.

The play, which was written by queer-identifying Hollywood scriptwriter Joshua Kaplan, tells the story of a fictional intervention staged for Rowling by the stars of the Harry Potter franchise, Watson, Grint and Radcliffe.

Oh fuck off. Intervention yourselves. Women don’t need a god damn “intervention” because we won’t say that men are women.

The work was initially titled TERF CUNT, with TERF standing for trans-exclusionary radical feminist, a term which has been deployed pejoratively against women who have opposed trans ideology.

Guess what other term has been deployed pejoratively against women who have opposed trans ideology. That’s right! “Cunt”! (The Telegraph of course doesn’t actually use the full word, it uses the coy “c***” so that we won’t think it’s vulgar.)

It has been suggested by producers that some actresses may not want to appear in a play critiquing Rowling and ruin their chances of appearing in the lucrative new Harry Potter TV series on the Max streaming service.

Ah that’s nice. That’s lovely. It can’t be because they don’t want to appear in a play marinated in misogyny, no no, they must have some other greedier reason.

Oink oink fucking oink.

The Justice Department says cops in Phoenix are doing it wrong.

The Phoenix Police Department routinely uses excessive force and discriminates against Black, Hispanic and Native American people, part of a broader pattern of unconstitutional policing in one of America’s largest cities, according to a Justice Department report released Thursday.

Will there be any such reports if Trump returns? Obviously not.

In a 126-page report, the Justice Department said a federal civil rights investigation found that police in Phoenix use unnecessarily dangerous force, making situations more volatile; fail to provide proper oversight when force is used; and enforce the law based on race. Investigators also found that the department violates the rights of people who are homeless, improperly arresting them and destroying their property.

While other jurisdictions have recently responded to similar investigations by pledging to cooperate with federal oversight, Phoenix officials had publicly questioned the Justice Department probe, raising the possibility that they could refuse to accept its findings. If so, that could lead to a legal battle in which the Justice Department goes to court to pursue an order forcing the local agency under federal supervision, opening a contentious new front in the public debate over police reform and accountability.

…

The Justice Department report released Thursday noted that the Phoenix police shoot and kill people at one of the country’s highest rates. Phoenix police officers have fatally shot at least 119 people since the beginning of 2015, according to a Washington Post database tracking deadly shootings by police. This number outpaces fatal shootings by police in other cities with larger populations, including Chicago, New York and Houston.

In the report, federal investigators said they found that Phoenix police “use unreasonable force to rapidly dominate encounters, often within the first few moments of an encounter.” Officers shoot at people who present no threat or who are no longer a threat, the report says, sometimes using force against people who are already unconscious due to police gunfire. Police also use force rapidly, the report said, sometimes before even speaking to the person involved.

Nobody’s perfect.

Ooooh yay, decor tips for trans women. I’m sure I could learn a lot – my decor isn’t all that womany. I’m not sure it’s even decor.

Creating a feminine home is a journey of self-expression and empowerment. This article offers practical decor tips and DIY projects for trans women to transform their living spaces. From selecting a soothing color palette and elegant furniture to adding soft textiles and ambient lighting, these suggestions help create a sanctuary that reflects personal style. 

That’s why we have to tell you how to do it: it’s so personal that only complete strangers can give you lessons in it.

No crude stereotypes there, no indeed.

Labour continues to ignore women.

Labour has pledged to ban conversion therapy despite fears it could stop children who are questioning their gender from getting help. The party unveiled a “fully trans-inclusive ban” in their plans on Thursday, which would come into force should they succeed in the polls.

…

The Labour Party’s manifesto included a section describing legislation around conversion practices as “a very complex issue”. The document stated: “So-called conversion therapy is abuse – there is no other word for it – so Labour will finally deliver a full trans-inclusive ban on conversion practices, while protecting the freedom for people to explore their sexual orientation and gender identity.”

If “conversion therapy” is “so-called” then how is Labour so certain that it’s “abuse”?

The trick of course is to pretend that therapy for gender-confused children is the same as homophobic pseudo-therapy with the goal of talking kids out of being gay.

Following the Conservatives’ rejection earlier this week, Helen Joyce, director of advocacy for Sex Matters, said the Tories had heeded “growing evidence” that the ban would be “harmful”.

“The Conservatives’ decision not to pursue a ban on so-called ‘conversion therapy’ reflects growing evidence that such measures are unnecessary and even harmful,” she said. “Abuse perpetrated under the guise of healthcare or therapy is already illegal.” Ms Joyce added: “It is by now well established that most children feeling gender distress or convinced of an opposite-sex identity will grow out of this during puberty. It is hard to see how a conversion therapy ban could be framed so as to avoid outlawing the supportive, open-ended approach recommended in the recent Cass Review.”

…

Kate Barker, Chief Executive, LGB Alliance said: “This is a dark day for young LGB people. As the Cass Review noted, 89 per cent of girls and 81 per cent of boys experiencing gender distress are same-sex attracted. Therapists should not be criminalised for exploring the reasons someone feels uncomfortable in their body, including internalised homophobia and autism. If this manifesto promise becomes law, it will exert a chilling effect on professionals and drive more young people to undertake medical procedures with profound, irreversible and lifelong consequences.”

On the upside, we’ll see more women with hairy armpits on the covers of fashion mags.

Hahahahahahahaha classic – she’s nonbinereeeee yet somehow she still ends up on the cover of Harpers Bazaar in her underwear looking passive and vacant. Unshaved armpits=exciting thrilling unusual original rebelliousish gender theater.

Convicted felons are not allowed to have guns.

Weeks after he was convicted of 34 felony counts in his hush-money trial, Donald Trump confessed to having a gun—which would be illegal with his felony conviction.

New York City Department of Probation officials questioned the convicted felon and Republican presidential nominee Tuesday in a presentencing interview, and part of the discussion concerned a gun registered to him in the state. Under federal law, convicted felons are not allowed to have guns or ammunition.

…

Trump turned over two of his three licensed guns to the New York Police Department on March 31, 2023, before he was arrested for paying hush money to adult film actress Stormy Daniels. The third gun was supposed to be “lawfully moved to Florida.” Palm Beach police told CNN that they weren’t aware of any gun Trump owned and that he hadn’t submitted one to them since his felony conviction.

Laws are for other people to obey.

Hahahaha no. Creepy Jeffrey would love that but no.

“Could” if water turned into wine and dogs taught philosophy at Cambridge.

William “Lia” Thomas lost.

Lia Thomas, the swimmer who became the first transgender winner of an American collegiate title, has had her case against new World Aquatics rules dismissed by the Court Of Arbitration of Sport.

World Aquatics banned transgender swimmers from the elite female category if they had undergone any part of male puberty following Thomas’s NCAA win in 2022, an intervention which ended Thomas’s hopes of ever competing in women’s swimming events at the Olympics.

As is only right.

Thomas responded by lodging a legal challenge with Cas in September of last year, arguing that the rules were “invalid and unlawful” because they were discriminatory and contrary to the Olympic Charter and European Convention of Human Rights. Cas, however, has dismissed the case after concluding that the rules applied only to World Aquatics elite events or world records, and otherwise had “no impact” on athletes.

Let’s hope this is the last we ever hear from that horrible man.

Originally a comment by Artymorty on There’s a sucker born every minute.

I’ve never in my life heard of anyone paying for a life coach’s services, and that’s puzzled me more and more; I seem to come across a self-declared life coach online at least once a week. Who the hell are they coaching?

Now I have my answer: like Amway salesmen, life coaches are their own target demographic. The only people gullible enough to buy it are the people gullible enough to get roped into selling it.

It feels like everything is a pyramid scheme these days. In the information-overload/hypertechnology age, we’re all feeling lost at sea and searching for safe harbour. In this environment, people everywhere are throwing themselves behind dubious “life changing” schemes. When you look at it that way, getting into “life coaching” isn’t all that different from getting into gender ideology.

I would say the same about Bitcoin, or NFTs. They’re pyramid schemes that sell the promise of life improvement through investment in junk products.

I happen to believe Canada’s entire economy has become swept up in one such pyramid scheme, a craze that promises to change everyone’s lives but which is centred around junk products: the real estate speculation bubble. Countless Canadians have redirected their savings into investing in the condo craze. Many people have even quit their jobs to become full-time real estate speculators. Prices have ballooned far above anything remotely rational, and now the entire country is deep in debt, trying (and failing) to keep up with their preposterous mortgage payments. Millions of Canadians now depend on food banks; there’s a national boycott of our chief grocer (resentment at sky-high grocery prices is a side-effect of people finding they don’t have enough money to eat after the rent/mortgage bill comes out); there’s a catastrophic spike in homelessness; international students and recent immigrants are turning around and leaving; storefronts are shuttering. No one can afford any discretionary spending, leading to mass layoffs in the service sector, leading to a cascade of job losses throughout the economy. All because of the get-rich-quick condo investment pyramid scheme. The true believers are adamant that the problem is simply a temporary increase in interest rates, but the true problem is the principal on these home loans, not the interest: everybody’s real estate valuations need to be cut in half, coast to coast, to make life liveable again in this country. There is in fact more for-rent housing and more for-sale housing on the market right now than there has been in decades, so the problem is certainly not supply. The problem is that the prices are too high for anyone to afford, and the normal machinations of supply and demand haven’t yet succeeded in bringing the prices back down to earth, because everyone — including policymakers in the federal government — is desperate to put off the inevitable reckoning with reality.

It feels like I’m living in a bizarre dream where everyone around me has succumbed to some cult or other. It’s Invasion of the Critical-Thinking Snatchers, and the few of us un-snatched remainers are laying low, just trying to hold on until something comes along to save us all.

How is “life coaching” even a thing?

With early roots in the late-20th-century pull toward self-improvement, life coaching broadly encompasses a program of goal-setting and talk-therapy-style sessions aimed at improving an individual’s circumstances and well-being.

They may be “talk-therapy-style” but that doesn’t mean they are talk therapy. There’s no body of knowledge behind “life coaching”; it’s just people giving advice, with no training or education required. I don’t understand why people pay other people to do that when they could just do it themselves.

Business is booming. The International Coaching Federation, the world’s largest nonprofit coaching association, estimated that the industry was worth $4.6 billion in 2022 and that the number of coaches increased 54 percent between 2019 and 2022. Because the industry lacks standardized accreditation, it’s most likely larger — one of the dangers of life coaching is that anyone can claim the title of life coach.

And, clearly, lots and lots of people believe that the title of life coach means something.

“Coaching is a self-regulated industry, which means that anyone can establish a coaching practice regardless of their training or professional background,” said Carrie Abner, the vice president of credentials and standards at the International Coaching Federation, in a statement. She said that clients should make sure they were working with trained and experienced coaches who had credentials.

Trained how, by whom, where?

Ms. Abner said that coaches with credentials from the International Coaching Federation agreed to abide by a code of ethics. “If a client feels a coach has acted in a way that is out of alignment with professional or ethical standards, the client has a formal process available to them to hold the coach accountable,” she said.

Well that’s good but what is the substance of the training? What is the body of knowledge that trainees are taught?

Spoiler: you can read to the end of the article but you still won’t find any answers to that question.

Oh SHUT up.

Matt Smith has been praised by fans for correcting Sue Perkins on his House of the Dragon co-star’s pro-nouns during an interview.

The word is “pronouns”; not “pro-nouns”. Illiterate hacks.

The former Doctor Who and The Crown star was chatting to the TV presenter about season two of the prequel to the Game of Thrones franchise when Sue mislabelled actor Emma D’Arcy as a ‘she’. Emma identifies as non-binary and goes by the pronouns they/them – something Matt was quick to effortlessly point out as the interview with former The Great British Bake Off host Sue continued.

Blah blah blah. There’s no such thing as “non-binary.” Nobody has time or energy or inclination to memorize all the luxury pronouns out there, and nobody needs to be corrected for referring to an Emma with a “she.” Just shut up.

Emma, 31, recently opened up on how clothes play a part in their non-binary identity during an interview with HighSnobiety magazine and said: “Clothing, for most people, is central to who they are and how they express themselves. But for gender-fluid or trans people, clothes play an even more fundamental role.”

Oh dear god just stop talking.

Can’t a guy call people faggots in the privacy of his own [checks notes] Vatican?

Pope Francis has again been accused of using a highly offensive term to describe gay men in a closed-door meeting, two weeks after the Vatican apologized over his use of the same slur.

The Italian news agency ANSA, citing unnamed sources, reported that Francis used the Italian word in a meeting on Tuesday afternoon in which he suggested gay men should be welcome in the Church but not in seminaries. The Pope is alleged to have used the term in a non-public meeting with Roman priests at the Salesian Pontifical University.

Ok not his own Vatican but his own Pontifical University. Much the same thing. Pontifical, you see.

And ok not literally “faggots” because that’s English and he won’t have been speaking English. He used the Italian word for “faggots.”

Anyway, can’t a Catholic homophobe have some privacy around here?

Two sources in the room told NBC News last month that the Pope used the phrase in another closed-door meeting with bishops on May 20. The Vatican was moved to issue a rare apology “to those who were offended.”

Ah yes, the old “I’m tho thorry you were ofFENded ya big whiny faggot” apology. Good job, Frank.

Southern institutions are going all-in on the nasty prejudices and persecutions these days.

Southern Baptists say women are inferior.

Even as they prepare to vote on a formal ban on churches with women pastors, delegates to the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to boot one such church from its ranks.

Messengers, as voting representatives are known, voted 6,759 to 563 to oust First Baptist Church of Alexandria, a historic Virginia congregation that affirms women can serve in any pastoral role, including as senior pastor.

What’s wrong with saying women can be senior pastors?

Tut, don’t be silly, it’s obvious. Women are inferior. End of story.

“We find no joy in making this recommendation, but have formed the opinion that the church’s egalitarian beliefs regarding the office of pastor do not closely identify with the convention’s adopted statement of faith,” said Jonathan Sams, chair of the credentials committee.

Egalitarianism is bad. Hierarchy is good. Inferior people must understand and agree that they’re inferior.

Early Tuesday, a small group of women stood outside the Indiana Convention Center in a low-key demonstration in support of women in ministry. “I hope that people know women have equal value and can be pastors,” said the Rev. Meredith Stone, executive director of Baptist Women in Ministry. The organization originated among Southern Baptists in the 1980s, but it now works with women in a variety of Baptist denominations.

Joining them was Christa Brown, who has long advocated for fellow survivors of sexual abuse in Southern Baptist churches and criticized the denomination’s resistance to reforms, an effort she has chronicled in a new memoir, “Baptistland.” The Southern Baptists ongoing struggles with sexual abuse reforms is also on this year’s calendar. She said there’s a direct connection between issues of abuse and the equality of women in ministry. “When you squash some people, it sets up a lot more people to be squashed,” she said.

Indeed.