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.

The BBC starts by saying it’s dangerous, then moves to saying be careful when you do it. They should have stuck with it’s dangerous.

Boys as young as 14 have been asking their teachers how to choke girls during sex, a teacher has told the BBC. Dr Tamasine Preece, who teaches at Bryntirion Comprehensive in Bridgend, said some children now felt it was a normal part of sex and asked if “a soft squeeze on the neck is OK”. Health experts said pornography was a key contributor and that there was no safe way to strangle someone.

There you go. Third sentence: there’s no safe way to strangle someone. And yet the Beeb goes on to give advice on how to do it.

Dr Preece, the school’s curriculum lead for health and wellbeing, said there had been questions “creeping in, such as ‘How can I choke someone safely?'”. She added: “I’ve certainly been told by some children that they think that girls really want to be choked – with one saying girls are mad for it.”

Johanna Robinson, Wales’ national adviser on violence against women and girls, has heard similar examples. “I’ve spoken to sexual health nurses who told me men in college were asking questions like ‘How do I safely strangle my partner?’ One young person was quoted to me asking ‘What do I do if I need to resuscitate my partner?’.'”

You don’t. There’s no such thing as “safely strangling.”

Dr Preece said conversations needed to include consent and how that must continue throughout sex. She encourages conversation in her classroom, so teenagers understand consent is needed rather than “just blindly accepting it” and encourages children to talk to their parents as well.

Oh ffs. Consent is not the issue! It’s no good asking for consent to throw girls off tall buildings; just don’t do it. Go back to the beginning of the article, where it says strangling is NOT SAFE.

So the climate thing wasn’t a joke?

The planet just marked a “shocking” new milestone, enduring 12 consecutive months of unprecedented heat, according to new data from Copernicus, the European Union’s climate monitoring service. Every single month from June 2023 to May 2024 was the world’s hottest such month on record, Copernicus data showed.

The 12-month heat streak was “shocking but not surprising” given human-caused climate change, said Carlo Buontempo, the director of Copernicus, who warned of worse to come. Unless planet-warming fossil fuel pollution is slashed, “this string of hottest months will be remembered as comparatively cold,” he said.

Is planet-warming fuel pollution going to be slashed? Hahaha that’s a good one. The planes fly, the cars zoom, the cruise ships go north and return, the air conditioners struggle to keep up. No we’re not slashing our fuel consumption.

Copernicus released its data the same day as United Nations Secretary General António Guterres made an impassioned speech in New York about climate change, slamming fossil fuel companies as the “godfathers of climate chaos” and, for the first time, explicitly calling on all countries to ban advertising their fossil fuel products.

Guterres urged world leaders to swiftly take control of the spiraling climate crisis or face dangerous tipping points. “We are playing Russian roulette with our planet,” he said Wednesday. “We need an exit ramp off the highway to climate hell.”

Mixing metaphors, but he’s not wrong.

Dozens have died in India over the past few weeks as temperatures pushed toward 50 degrees Celsius (122 Fahrenheit); brutal temperatures in Southeast Asia have caused deaths, school closures and shriveled crops; and as heat surged in Mexico, howler monkeys dropped dead from trees.

Wellll that’s all far away.

“Extreme events turbocharged by climate chaos are piling up, destroying lives, pummeling economies and hammering health,” Gutteres said.

Humanity is having an outsized impact on the world, he said, likening it to the meteor that began the process of wiping out dinosaurs 66 million years ago.

“In the case of climate, we are not the dinosaurs,” Guterres said. “We are the meteor. We are not only in danger. We are the danger.”

We are the meteor. That’s a good way of putting it.

The Telegraph is on it. Yo, Guardian, BBC, why aren’t you?

A charity has come under fire after claiming that anyone, of any gender, can have ovarian cancer. Ovarian Cancer Action posted on Twitter: “Did you know that anyone with ovaries, regardless of gender identity, can be at risk for ovarian cancer? “Let’s raise awareness by asking: can men get ovarian cancer? #PrideMonth #OvarianCancerAwareness” The post was accompanied by an emoji of a rainbow flag, as well as an image entitled: ‘Can men get ovarian cancer?’ along with the answer: “Anyone with ovaries, regardless of gender identity, can be at risk of ovarian cancer.

Anyone with ovaries=any woman. Gender idenniny is wholly irrelevant.

Responding to the post, Kate Barker, chief executive of the LGB Alliance, said: “Activists want to see the reality of biological sex replaced with a magical fantasy world of 100 genders and they are prepared to sacrifice the health of women to achieve it.”

…

Fiona McAnena, director of campaigns at Sex Matters, added: “This divisive stunt from Ovarian Cancer Action in the name of celebrating Pride Month is an insult to women who have suffered from the disease, as well as to their families. Men cannot get ovarian cancer. To suggest otherwise is misleading and dangerous, particularly when it comes to the health of women with learning difficulties or those who speak English as a second language. Public-health charities should use clear, sex-based language to communicate. The language of gender-identity ideology obfuscates the reality that sex matters in healthcare.”

But it’s worth it for the…um…supportivativity vibes. Yeah, that’s it. Sowing confusion about ovarian cancer is solidarityesqueish.

The Telegraph reports:

Trans rights activists who have publicly trashed the Cass Review and promote puberty blockers are helping the SNP set up a new NHS child gender service in Scotland.

Why should there even be a “child gender service”? Why not a child service for children who think they’re birds? Stick them full of feathers and teach them to fly, yeah?

The Telegraph has seen evidence that a member of the group, which includes activist organisations and academics as well as doctors, used their position to spread disinformation to other members which rubbish[es] Hilary Cass’s findings.

Much bad unclear writing in this piece, unfortunately. The group includes activist organisations and academics as well as doctors. The Telegraph has seen evidence that a member of the group used her [or his] position to tell lies about Cass’s findings.

“Members of this so-called healthcare group are being allowed to abuse their positions with attempts to rubbish the most comprehensive study of its kind ever carried out,” Trina Budge, a director at For Women Scotland, said. “They should not have been let anywhere near positions of influence over the NHS in the first place. But given their behaviour, continued membership is clearly untenable and they must be removed immediately.”

But they won’t be.

An email sent on April 16 by a representative of the organisation TransparentSees, the day before a group meeting was due to take place, urged members to read about “10 potentially dangerous items in the Cass Review”. An online blog it referred to claimed the Cass Review was “biased and prejudice-driven” and that the findings would “cause significant harms to trans children”. It added that the report recommendations were “built on a foundation of prejudice, ignorance, cisnormativity and pathologisation of trans lives”, and accused Dr Cass of promoting “a form of conversion therapy”.

What, medically speaking, is “cisnormativity”? Is it parallel to “two legs normativity” and “being able to see normativity” and “having a head at the top of the neck normativity”? Some people have amputations; some people are blind; some people are beheaded; does that mean it’s cruel and wicked to prefer to have two legs, and eyesight, and a head?

How to raise awareness of ovarian cancer? Hmmm, let’s see…I know! Tell everyone men can get it provided they have ovaries!

Another shipment of squalor from the bottomless source:

Let’s cut to the chase here: Is former President Donald Trump trying to sabotage Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich’s chances of being released before the November election?

On Thursday, Trump posted on social media that because of his extra-special relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, he — and only he — can free the innocent young American who has been languishing in a foreign jail for over 400 days. Trump claims that Putin will free the reporter as a unique personal favor to him — but will not do it for anyone else, which presumably includes President Joe Biden and the rest of the United States government.

And this will apparently only happen if Trump is returned to the White House, according to the post:

Evan Gershkovich, the Reporter from The Wall Street Journal, who is being held by Russia, will be released almost immediately after the Election, but definitely before I assume Office. He will be HOME, SAFE, AND WITH HIS FAMILY. Vladimir Putin, President of Russia, will do that for me, but not for anyone else, and WE WILL BE PAYING NOTHING!

Got that? Putin is Trump’s best friend and nobody else is so that must mean that Trump is the best person in the world. By the way this fella Gershkovich is just a toy in Trump’s game, which is why Trump isn’t telling Putin to release him now.

What is clear is that Trump continues to think that his relationship with Putin, such as it is, is a selling point for his presidential candidacy. And he obviously values this relationship highly. Back in 2018, Trump famously sided with Putin over his own intelligence agencies when asked about Russian election interference. Over the years he has defended Putin from charges that he is a killer. (“There are a lot of killers. You think our country’s so innocent?” Trump told Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly when asked about Putin’s reported penchant for murdering political opponents.) After the death of dissident Alexei Navalny in a Russian prison, Trump pointedly refused to condemn Putin or hold him in any way responsible.

Because he admires him.

Why it’s almost as if hatred of women is a real thing.

Millions of men in England and Wales pose a danger to women and children, the commissioner of the Metropolitan police has said.

Sir Mark Rowley said the figures were “eye-watering” and an “inconvenient truth” as he called for a much bigger effort, a national strategy and more money to tackle the problem.

He relied on an upcoming study produced for police chiefs nationally that says there are up to 4 million perpetrators of violence against women and children, who are mainly men, with one in 10 people being victims, who are mainly women or children.

Quite a popular sport then.

Oh well. It’s just human nature, or something. Never mind. Let’s just keep droning on about transphobia instead; it’s more glamorous.

Rowley said: “I think it’s a bit of an inconvenient truth about how big this problem is. If we are really nationally and in London have the scale of response that the threat to women and children from predatory men deserves, it will need a massively upscaled approach across multiple agencies.

“It’s great that we in the Met in our corner of the system [are] improving and doing better, but those iterative improvements are nowhere near what the size of the problem requires.”

Rowley accepted crimes such as sexual violence were under-reported and that a national strategy to reduce offending with multi-agency prevention and protection measures was needed, and currently lacking.

It’s so interesting, isn’t it. Crimes such as sexual violence against women are under-reported, while at the same time hypothetical violence against men who pretend to be women is endlessly talked about and used as a silencer of…women. Real violence against women, meh, forget it Jake it’s Chinatown; pretend violence against men who pretend to be women DIRE EMERGENCY EVERYBODY DO SOMETHING AT ONCE.

It kind of makes you think that nearly everyone sees men as all-important and women as so much useless fluff.

Bad dishonest reporting strikes again.

It starts with the headline:

East Valley teen is the first Washington transgender athlete to win a state high school track championship. But controversy followed

Yes that whole long thing is the headline.

The issue is the usual issue: saying “transgender athlete” conveniently evades the issue of what kind of trans athlete. If the athlete is a girl who identifies as a boy then she’s harming only herself. But the athlete hardly ever is a girl, is it, because what would be the point? But it’s excellent fun for a boy to do it, because he gets to cheat and be flattered and protected for doing so.

It starts with the headline and continues with the story.

Verónica Garcia did not hear the boos when the race started last weekend. When she took the lead in the State 2A girls 400-meter run at the track and field championships in Tacoma, they grew in volume and became unmistakable as she reached the finish line to become the first transgender high school athlete to place first in state.

He took the lead, he reached the finish line. He became the first male high school athlete to place first in state racing against female athletes. It all looks so different when it’s reported accurately, but it never is. All of journalism has knuckled under to this revolting mass insult to girls and women.

Such victories are typically a time for celebration but the East Valley High School junior’s win has sparked controversy.

Such victories are not typically a time for celebration when they are achieved by blatant grotesque cheating. Of course his win has sparked controversy: it is not fair. It’s not even a genuine win.

Garcia cheered and clapped for her competitors as they received their medals. When the announcer called her to the podium, the crowd fell silent and the other high school runners at the podium did not acknowledge her as they stood with hands clasped behind their backs.

As she accepted her gold medal, a voice in the crowd could be heard yelling, “She’s not a girl!”

Garcia expected the chilly reaction from the crowd, though she was “somewhat hurt” her peers did not offer congratulations. “I guess maybe I expected sportsmanship because I was cheering the rest of them on when they were called. So I guess I expected to get that reciprocated,” she said. “But I didn’t get that.”

He didn’t get that because he was cheating. Sportsmanship would have been not racing against girls. The bad sportsmanship is all his.

While the national debate continues to rage regarding the fairness of transgender participation in girls athletic competitions, Garcia said what’s lost is that the subjects of these controversies are often teenagers just trying to have fun in a sport they love.

Liar. Just try to have fun in a sport you love racing against other boys.

Unlike some states, Washington does not require transgender student athletes to undergo hormone replacement therapy or suppression of the hormones naturally produced by their bodies. Transgender athletes in Washington also are not required to disclose their medical information to play high school sports.

So boys in Washington state can do whatever they want and girls get no say. How vewy pwogwessive.

Garcia received support from Spokane’s Odyssey Youth Movement, which provides support and resources to transgender youth in Eastern Washington. Executive Director Ian Sullivan congratulated Garcia on behalf of the Odyssey Youth Movement and said transgender, nonbinary and gender-diverse youth should have the “same rights and opportunities” as any other student.

But it’s not the same rights and opportunities. It’s different ones, new and bizarre and unfair ones.

The negative attention and controversy could have a severely negative impact on Garcia, said Dr. Kellan Bryne, an executive director of Whitman-Walker, a national organization that provides health care to the LGBTQ community. “It’s horrendous. There’s already a mental health crisis among young people in this country, trans or not, and to be attacked for wanting the same thing that every other teenager wants – which is to fit in, to belong, to participate, to be on the team, to play … That’s incredibly damaging, and it’s incredibly cruel.”

Oh do shut up. He’s not being attacked for wanting to fit in, to belong, to participate, to be on the team, to play. He can do all that with the other boys. If he’s not skilled enough to be on the team, that’s just how it goes.

In fact this whole idea that there’s a right to participate smacks right up against the core value in competitive sports, which is the competition. If everybody has a right to everything then there can’t be any competition: kids can play the game but there’s no score and no team wins. Hitting a home run is no different from hitting the ball straight into the hands of the kid on second base.

He’s really not bright.

India Willoughby explains that he doesn’t want to be in an all-male ward in a hospital.

Before offering your opinion on the latest bit of culture-war scaremongering from the Tories on trans people, consider this. How would you feel if a woman you know, perhaps vulnerable, was forced into being treated in an all-male ward at a hospital. How would that woman feel?

Notice anything there? He asks how “you” would feel if a woman you know blah blah – making it startlingly clear that he’s addressing men only, which makes it startlingly clear that he doesn’t even see women as people. A generic “you” reading this piece of his must be a man, because…women don’t read? I guess?

But second and more crucial, of course, is the idiocy of saying “women don’t want to be in an all-male ward therefore men like me should be in women’s wards.” He points out what women want only for the sake of claiming it applies to him, a man.

Terrified, most likely. And that is exactly how I would feel in the same situation.

But you’re a man.

My instincts are the same as most women – I just happen to be trans. 

His “instincts” are not the same as most women’s. He just says they are. And he doesn’t “just happen” to be trans; he decided to label himself trans.

He goes on and on in this vein, utterly oblivious to the way he’s underlining the reasons he should not be anywhere near a women’s ward in a hospital.

Let me be clear. I would never, ever go on an all-male hospital ward. I’d rather die at the scene of my injury or illness than be placed on one. 

Fine; do that. Meanwhile: notice that actual women also don’t want to be confined with men while helpless and stop claiming that you should be allowed to intrude on them.

Today I learned it’s Pride Month. Kathleen Stock is not entirely enthusiastic.

I know what you’re thinking: haven’t we already had it? Perhaps you’re thinking of LGBT+ History month in February. Or maybe you’re remembering the Tolkienesque-sounding IDAHOBIT — otherwise known as International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia — a fortnight ago. Later in the year there will be Ace (asexual) Week and Transgender Awareness Week; and don’t forget the Pride and Trans Pride parades scattered throughout the summer. The Catholic church has fewer holy days of obligation than the modern LGBTQI+ movement, and is arguably a lot less guilt-tripping.

On the other hand the Catholic church uses its enormous power to force women to have babies against their will. Credit where it’s due: the alphabet community doesn’t do that.

Just as early Christians made conversion easier by mimicking pagan rituals, so the rainbow gang has relaxed its entry criteria to ensure that straight people feel part of things too…

What is true, though, is that some people feel unwelcome at Pride parades. Paradoxically, many are lesbians and gay men, ideologically excluded because of their antiquated beliefs about the importance of biological sex to the definition of sexual orientation. For them, a male person can never be counted as a lesbian, no matter how high the heels or pink the lipstick, and even the most hirsute or muscular of female people could not accurately be called a gay man. They believe that stating they are attracted to people of the same sex, not the same gender identity, matters — particularly on behalf of confused young people coming to terms with their atypical orientation.

Yet the organiser, Pride in London, has made it obvious there’s no place for such heinous views at its events. The code of conduct even goes rogue from official Equality Act wording: “gender” and “gender identity” are listed as protected characteristics that may not, it is stressed, be “targeted” by “signage”. In plain terms: lesbians may not march with placards saying things like “lesbian = female homosexual”. The last time a group tried this in 2018, Pride in London denounced them as “shocking and disgusting”, demonstrating “a level of bigotry, ignorance and hate that is unacceptable”.

Because…a lesbian is not a female homosexual?

H/t J.A.

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on To bring communities together.

Conscious decision to place this on the 1st day of Pride month….

There are so many Whatever “Months” and Whatever “Days Of” Something throughout the year that any feminist pushback against trans hegemony and colonialism is going to be deemed “too close” to some Sacred, Appropriated Calendrical Stretch of Time. So basically it’s perpetually “Shut up and Obey All Year Long” Day.

And again, thanks for reiterating the fact that if women defending and asserting their sex-based rights is assumed to be nothing but “anti trans” activism, we can safely assume that any efforts to “extend” trans “rights”, and “equality”, are by definition anti woman. Also, your forced teaming is showing, because the simple statement of fact that woman are adult human females has no impact whatsoever on lesbians, gays, and bisexual people. This statement is not a threat to anyone. It only puts a crimp in the desire of trans identified males to violate women’s boundaries and appropriate women’s spaces. Those who claim it is any kind of threat, insult, or provocation, are in fact threatening, insulting, and provoking women. TiMs wouldn’t feel “targeted” or singled out or uncomfortable by this statement of fact if they were not already guilty of acting in bad faith. What they want and demand is only available through the abolition of proper, standard safeguarding procedures around women’s spaces, and the punishment of those women who say No to any such stripping of their rights.

The swift removal of these symbols of resistance shows how frightened trans activists are of any kind of resistance, of any show of dissent from the monolithic facade of officially enforced Corporate and Civic Happy Rainbow LGBT Solidarity (Or Else), that is expected of the conquered, occupied populace. Allowing the prolonged display of any signs of opposition to imposed trans orthodoxy is proof of a recalcitrant refusal to accept what has been decreed, and dangerous evidence of unacceptable dissatifaction amongst what was supposed to be a safely cowed, conforming “community”. Such shows of independent thought, and outright rejection of demands for obedience and compliance, are an unacceptable sign of transactivism’s inability to win the hearts and minds of everybody, and puts the lie to the Official Story that there is NO CONFLICT between trans “rights” and women’s rights. The angry response is like that of an abusive parent, who insists that everyone under their control must swear to the “fact,” and maintain at all costs, the fiction that theirs is One Big Happy Family, bruises and PTSD be damned.