The Daily Mail is surprisingly restrained on the subject of male breast milk.

[A]n NHS Trust says drug-induced milk from transgender women who were born male is as good for babies as a mother’s breast milk. A leaked letter from the medical director of University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust, published this week, describes both as ‘human milk’ and says that they are the ‘ideal food for infants’. The letter was sent on behalf of the Trust’s chief executive in response to a campaign group’s complaint about gender policies.

So what’s the truth? Can a biological male really breastfeed a baby by producing milk from their nipples? The complex answer is yes and no. By using a regimen known as the Newman-Goldfarb protocol, originally developed in 2000 for adoptive mothers, the body can be tricked into lactating even if it’s male.

It works by mimicking the hormonal changes that take place naturally in the body of a woman who has just given birth, and involves several weeks of regularly using a pump to stimulate the breast, taking a combination of contraceptive hormones and the anti-nausea drug domperidone, which increases levels of the milk-producing hormone prolactin.

But if that sounds simple, it really isn’t. For a start, domperidone is banned in the US over concerns it causes heart problems. The NHS sometimes offers it to breastfeeding women who are struggling with low milk supply, as long as neither mother nor baby has any heart issues, and with clear instructions to report any changes in the baby’s behaviour. It should be used, says guidance, only ‘for a short time’.

That’s a lot of stipulations. Sometimes; struggling; as long as; clear instructions; only for a short time. That would at the very least indicate that doing it for the sake of a man’s vanity project or worse is beneath contempt.

What’s more, it’s not at all clear what else is in a trans woman’s ‘milk’. Since trans women are likely to be taking other prescription drugs as part of their transition, such as anti-androgens to lower their production of testosterone, and oestrogen and progesterone to help them create a less ‘masculine’ appearance, critics say the milk is potentially unsafe for a newborn, or at the very least should be rigorously tested.

Feminists mutter darkly about yet more double standards from the medical establishment — women, after all, are told to avoid aspirin while breastfeeding and to abstain even from the odd glass of wine because no one knows how much gets through to the milk.

But when a man wants to experiment it’s all hey live your best life bro.

Some scientists seem positive. A paper in The Journal of Human Lactation earlier this year stated that: ‘For transgender women . . . on oestrogen-based, gender-affirming hormone therapy, the ability to nourish their infants through production of their own milk may be a profoundly gender-affirming experience.’

What many experts say in private, however, seems utterly uncontroversial to most of us — that female breast milk is a miraculous biological substance with properties the male equivalent can’t replicate.

Breast milk, after all, is a ‘live’ substance, which adapts to a baby’s needs with remarkable precision. Many of us will know about colostrum, the ‘liquid gold’ that is produced in the earliest days of breastfeeding. It’s packed with antibodies, antioxidants, vitamins and nutrients in much higher quantities than in breast milk. Colostrum production has never been observed in males.

Blah blah blah. You’d think it was all about the babies.

It’s not always easy for new mothers to breastfeed, of course. Yet help from the NHS and independent organisations is already stretched thin, and many professionals tell me they are baffled and infuriated by resources being spent on promoting the idea of males trying to lactate when so many women are struggling to find adequate support. The pro-breastfeeding group La Leche League, for example, devotes lengthy space on its website to the issue.

‘About 85 per cent of mothers start breastfeeding in the UK, but that drops by about 50 per cent in the first six weeks, with as many as nine out of ten saying they didn’t want to stop but couldn’t find the help,’ one woman, who did not want to be named but who is involved in breastfeeding education, told me.

Kvetch kvetch kvetch. How are the men doing?

The BBC hits a new low.

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on We’re the violent actors?

We’re not the ones shouting threats and posting images of guns and knives.

Pffft. That’s just a) passionate rhetoric; b) completely justified self defence; c) “just joking” or “ironic”; in other words, good, clean, healthy fun; d) taken out of context. Choose whichever one is most expedient to the particular threatener.

Canada’s intelligence agency is warning that extremists could “inspire and encourage” serious violence against the 2SLGBTQI+ community

I daresay that those of us posting here on B&W would all be branded as “extremists” in light of the inflated threat vocabulary of transactivists. If misgendering is “violence,” questioning gender identity is “denying their right to exist,” and opposition and resistance to their demands is plotting “trans genocide,” then we are all guilty. Use our words against us; it’s all here. Low-hanging fruit ripe for the picking. Just a few pseudonyms to fugure out and you’re done. Take us away.

We’re as “guilty” of these things as feminist philosophical critiques of gender ideology are implicated in the murder (by men) of Brazillian trans-identified sex workers. There’s an undeniable, inevitable, straight-line connection between essays defending women’s rights and spaces and the brutal slaughter of thousands upon thousands of trans identified males happening around us every day, year in, year out. Just look around; trans folk are being banned from sports; they’re denied any and all medical care; they’re thrown out of their jobs and homes. They’re being rounded up as we speak, carted off to camps, never to be heard from again. It’s JUST LIKE THE JEWS IN NAZI GERMANY (oops, Jews are the bad guys now, right?) Why isn’t CSIS investigating all of that?

A former University of Waterloo student accused of attacking a gender-studies class with a knife last summer — sending an associate professor and two students to hospital — now faces 11 terrorism charges.

I wonder; in the current climate of captured government agencies, would an attack on a feminist gathering by a knife-wielding trans activist result in terrororism charges? Or would it be passed off as a “lone wolf” attack that could be blamed on the feminists themselves?

There is no “ecosystem of violent rhetoric within the anti-gender movement.”

But Ophelia, denial that such a thing exists is tantamount to admiting that it does.

There must such an ecosystem, or CSIS wouldn’t be interested in it. It’s a self-fulfilling prophesy, the resources being squandered by earmarked for will bear fruit of some kind, however vapourous and insubstantial. If a society believes in witchcraft, witches will be found. If not found, they will be created.

CSIS might declare victory by claiming to have “prevented” any number of attacks. They will be tied to the “transphobic dogwhistles” of the mildest sorts of criticism or questioning, because even the mildest criticism, the simplest presentation of the truth of the immutible human sex binary is an unorgiveable “incitement” that cannot be allowed to stand. Such shocking ideas are branded as right-wing bigotry by transactivists in an attempt to shut down debate and intimidate any who would speak such heresy. CSIS is now part of the Inquisition; if they are blind to the rhetorical asymmetry between transactivists and those women who dare say “No” to their demands, then they have joined the side of the genderists and will act on their suggestions. In fact , through this announcement, they already are.

Never mind the steady pushes against women’s rights from transactivists (Ogre even got a fucking medal for pretty much just that), never mind the men put into women’s prisons, the smearing of “watchful waiting” as “conversion therapy.” If “our side” was doing all of this to the “other side,” then CSIS might have something to investigate. But that’s not happening, and those examples of trans incursion on women’s rights are all state sanctioned actions. Perhaps CSIS is being put on the case precisely because of this resistance to what is essentially government policy. Would they have gone casting around on their own to find this as a subject of investigation, or were they pointed in that direction by their political masters? Are there no more important dangers and threats to the country that their time and effort could be more usefully deployed? Would they have made this sort of pre-emptive well-poisoning public announcement without permission? I have my doubts.

And if there is anti-trans violence, it won’t be because of the feminist critique of trans “rights.” Violent right wing extremists have their own agendas, and just because they agree with us that the sky is blue and water is wet, that doesn’t make us complicit with or the inspiration of whatever actions they take. We’re not telling anyone to “Punch transwomen in the fucking mouth.” You can’t even read it between the lines. They’re the ones demonizing fair, principled opposition to their demands, refusing open and honest debate. They’re the ones who hound people out of their jobs for refusing to aquiesce to trans orthodoxy. And now they’re the ones wielding the power of the state intelligence security aparatus. Welcome to Lysenkoism 2.0, the Trans Edition.

Maybe I’m awfulizing for no good reason, exhibiting an unreasonable combination of political hypochondria and histrionics. Indeed, putting all this out there makes me sound like I’ve become some kind of raving, right-wing conspiracy nut, even to myself. But I’ve stood still while much of the Left (of which I have counted myself among) has jumped of a fucking cliff, leaving me politically homeless. I would only ever vote Conservative if all the other alternatives were even farther to the right than they are, but all of the parties I normally support have surrendered to trans dogma. The lunatics haven’t taken over the asylum yet, but they’re being asked to advise on policy; delusional fantasies are accepted as Gospel truth, and sanity is being viewed with increasing suspicion and distrust.

I fear, at some point, I will be left muttering beneath my breath, “Eppur si muove.”

Wait what? Tranz kidz aren’t at greater risk of suicide if they don’t wreck their bodies? But we were assured they are!

A new study challenges the common assertion that gender-dysphoric youth are at elevated risk of suicide if not treated with “gender affirming” medical interventions. If it’s true, it ought to have a seismic impact on the accepted medical approach to gender-confused youth.

Reported in the BMJ, the study examines data on a Finnish cohort of gender-referred adolescents between 1996 and 2019, and compares their rates of all-cause and suicide mortality against a control group. While suicide rates in the gender-referred group studied were higher than in the control group, the difference was not large: 0.3% versus 0.1%. And — importantly — this difference disappeared when the two groups were controlled for mental health issues severe enough to require specialist psychiatric help.

In other words, if I understand correctly, some adolescents who are gender dysphoric may have other mental health issues that nudge them into suicide.

In other words: while transgender identity does seem to be associated with elevated suicide risk, the link is not very strong. What’s more, the causality may not work the way activists claim.

As in, not “lack of gender fiddling–>elevated suicide risk” but “mental health issues–>gender dysphoria and elevated suicide risk.”

The association between gender dysphoria and mental illness is well-documented by both providers of “gender-affirming care” and trans advocacy groups and clinical psychology research. But one less well-evidenced claim, based on this association, is that these difficulties are caused not by being transgender, but by the political and social stigma associated with it. Gender dysphoria, we are to understand, is not in itself a mental health issue. What causes mental health issues in transgender youth — up to and including suicide — is the wider world’s rejection of their identity, and of the metaphysical frame of “gender identity” as such.

Which looks like not so much a medical or mental health explanation as a tactic. “Give me what I want or I’ll kill myself,” to put it concisely.

But if the Finnish study is correct, this whole rhetorical, legislative, and medical edifice may be built on sand. If the elevated risk of suicidality in trans youth disappears when you control for other psychiatric difficulties, this suggests strongly that trans youth are not more at risk due to transphobia or invalidation, but due to the well-documented fact that gender dysphoria tends to occur in people who are disturbed and unhappy more generally.

Horse and cart as opposed to cart and horse.

Every bit as good for babies, they say.

An NHS trust has said that breast milk produced by trans women who were assigned male at birth [i.e. men] is as good for babies as that produced by a mother who has given birth.

In a letter to campaigners, the University of Sussex Hospitals NHS Trust (USHT), said that the milk produced by trans women after taking a combination of drugs is “comparable to that produced following the birth of a baby”.

“Comparable” is a weasel-word there. Sure, you can compare the two, but they’re not the same, or alike.

In an August 2023 response, the hospital defended its claims, referring to five scientific papers dating back to 1977 and pointing to World Health Organisation (WHO) guidance and “overwhelming evidence” that “human milk” is better for a baby than formula milk.

Well yes, “human milk” meaning the milk mothers produce. Not meaning the liquid men can produce after they take a cocktail of hormones and progestin.

For a person born male to breastfeed, they must develop milk-producing glands by taking the hormone progestin.

A drug is required to lactate, such as domperidone, which is often prescribed to women struggling to breastfeed, and helps to stimulate the production of prolactin – a separate hormone that tells the body to produce milk.

Domperidone, also known by the brand name Motilum, was not intended for this, but is prescribed off-label by doctors, despite the manufacturer, Janssen, itself recommending against it because of possible side effects to a baby’s heart.

Oh, well, just the heart, so that’s no big deal.

The patient leaflet for Motilium says: “Small amounts have been detected in breastmilk. Motilium may cause unwanted side effects affecting the heart in a breastfed baby. [It] should be used during breastfeeding only if your physician considers this clearly necessary.”

Is it “clearly necessary” for men to be able to produce nipple goo to feed to babies?

Lottie Moore, of the Policy Exchange, which uncovered the letter, said the trust “is unbalanced and naïve in its assertion that the secretions produced by a male on hormones can nourish an infant in the way a mother’s breast milk can”.

USHT has removed the webpage where the guidance was published, but now links to an external website, La Leche League, which states it “supports everyone who wants to breastfeed or chestfeed in reaching their goals”.

Even if they’re men, and even if the men “reaching their goals” is bad for the baby’s nutrition and health. Rock on, daddies!

Oh yay, yet another piece on how self-obsessed it’s possible to be.

I’m non-binary. I came to terms with this recently, after living socially as a woman for many years — but I think I knew from a very young age. I just didn’t have the right words for it.

Are you really???? How fascinating and exciting! Please tell us everything about it in the utmost detail.

Then puberty hit and assigned me with the very special task of looking after two giant sacks of flesh, fat and membrane.

In every play I performed in after that point, I was only ever cast as matronly old women or busty temptresses. It sucked.

Well now that’s a different story. The article is accompanied by a photo, and she does indeed have very big breasts. I would have hated that too, but it wouldn’t have been because I was “non-binary.”

Nowadays, I use they/them pronouns, and I try to let people know that upfront — but a funny thing tends to happen when people look at me. You see, their eyes always trend downwards, scoping out what you might call the ‘traditionally feminine’ body I live in. You might also call it my ‘massive boobs’. When this elevator-eye assessment is complete, I like to think that a little switch flips over in the cis person’s brain to a ‘SHE/HER’ setting. When this switch is flipped, it takes a gargantuan effort to reset it to neutral.

No, see, it’s the other way around. Your breasts don’t determine your personality, your interests, your character. You can’t be “neutral” because that’s not a thing, but you can be a woman with massive boobs who flouts the silly rules about how women are supposed to look and act. You can do that without expecting other people to pretend you’re neither woman nor man. It’s actually a lot less trouble in the end.

Well that’s me convinced!

Top quality advocacy for sure.

The CBC has got to be kidding.

CSIS warns that the ‘anti-gender movement’ poses a threat of ‘extreme violence’

Seriously? We’re not the ones shouting threats and posting images of guns and knives.

Canada’s intelligence agency is warning that extremists could “inspire and encourage” serious violence against the 2SLGBTQI+ community — a threat the Canadian Security Intelligence Service says almost certainly will continue over the coming year.

…

“CSIS assesses that the violent threat posed by the anti-gender movement is almost certain to continue over the coming year and that violent actors may be inspired by the University of Waterloo attack to carry out their own extreme violence against the 2SLGBTQI+ community or against other targets they view as representing the gender ideology ‘agenda,'” said CSIS spokesperson Eric Balsam in an email to CBC News.

It’s so DARVO it leaves me breathless.

What was the U of Waterloo attack?

A former University of Waterloo student accused of attacking a gender-studies class with a knife last summer — sending an associate professor and two students to hospital — now faces 11 terrorism charges.

And that means lots more will do the same? Regardless of the fact that the people of Gender Critical really don’t resort to threats and bullying in the way people like India Willoughby do?

Balsam said that while violent rhetoric does not always lead to violence, “the ecosystem of violent rhetoric within the anti-gender movement, compounded with other extreme worldviews, can lead to serious violence.”

Stinking liar. There is no “ecosystem of violent rhetoric within the anti-gender movement.” There is such an ecosystem within the pro-gender movement. See for example Fred[a] Wallace of “punch a terf in the fucking face” fame.

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on By folks across the gender spectrum.

This invitation to submit is really rather helpful, in an a completely unexpected and unintentional way. Putting the whole list of gender variations (or least a good chunk of them) in one spot lets you see just what a mad, disparate, incoherent, contradictory mess it all is. The only way that some of these subunits can exist in the same room together is by keeping their definitions vague and non-commital to the point of meaninglessness, as normally several of the groups would be mutually exclusive, or distinct without actually being different. (Some of them may accidently include actual lesbians, like the occasional, unintended peanut that can show up in candy bars made in factories that are not nut-fee.)

Trans We know that transgenderism is supposed to encompass, amongst other demographics, autistic girls trying to escape womanhood, and AGP males attempting to break into it. To be somewhat more generous, it is an attempt or desire to “live as” the biological sex one is not, in order to match an internal “gendered” concept of the self, which would otherwise be in conflict with the physical body. Yet if gender is distinct from sex, why try to modify the body in an attempt to match the gender it allegedly houses? Why not leave each alone? How can there be a conflict if they’re different, unrelated, and independent? How does dysphoria arise? Why assume the “gender” is right and the body is wrong? Why force a “match” between them?

Nonbinary A supposed gender identity which apparently rejects either sex as a “target” identity. How does this fit with “transness,” which posits a mismatch between the gendered “identity” and the physical body? What is the “mismatch” here? This seems more like a refusal to engage in the stereotypical gendered sex-roles expected of each sex. Why would this require body modification at all? There are no “sexless” people to act as a “target” sex. Here we seem to have a conflation between sex and sex roles.

Genderqueer Let’s join two terms, one ill-defined, the other shorn of almost all meaning entirely, and pretend it’s something edgy and special. It would seem that a vital ingredient is hair dye. Be as cishetero as you like, but do it with purple or green hair and BAM you’re genderqueer. No, I have no idea what it’s supposed to mean; I think that’s the point.

Genderfluid Puts the lie to the whole “gender is innate and fixed” claim. Looks to me more like a lack of commitment than an actual “identity.” Think Philip/Pippa Bunce (when he wants to win a women’s race yet still be paid at the men’s rate, or Eddie Izzard when he used to move between boy and girl “modes.” Please. Make up your fucking minds.

Two-Spirit (Mis)appropriation of a First Nations cultural concept so that transactivists can use “White Western Colonialism” as an epithet while they themselves are White, Western Colonialists. Queerness (see “dyed hair” above) means their “whiteness” is now accidental, incidental Whiteness, but not political Whiteness. “Two-Spiritedness” is taken out of context, subsumed under and absobed into current Western concepts and understandings of “transness” and then, anachronistically, projected backwards in time, and continent-wide in space. It is simply assumed to be, monolithically, a part of all First Nations cultures, like tipis, totem poles, and feathered war-bonnets. Can’t get much more White, Western, Colonial than that, can you.

Gender Non Conforming Let’s trans everyone who chafed at the restrictions placed on them by sexist, gendered sex-roles, even though transness itself relies heavily on those very sex-roles to determine the supposed disconnect between the sexed body and gendered soul. Without this, a boy who likes dresses and dolls is just a boy who likes dresses and dolls, not a girl trapped in a boy’s body.

Intersex More appropriation. My understanding is that the preferred term is DSD, or Disorder (or Difference) of Sexual Devlopment. Transactivists prefer this term because it suggests that sex is a spectrum, that male and female are not as cut and dried, that there is some sort of biological no-man’s land, as it were. Even if this were true (which, of course it isn’t) such biological “space’ would not offer any support at all that humans can move between the sexes, however many “shades” there were between them. Using DSD is inimical because it says right on the tin that it’s a Difference or Disorder of Sexual Development. Nothing to do with “gender” at all. It’s a failure of the body to reach one of the two endpoints at which its normal growth and maturation would aim. Also, there are a whole bunch of DSD conditions, but each is particular to only one sex. It’s not a grab bag mixture, or a halfway house between being male or female that offers any kind of hope that one could be both, neither or switch between them. Thus the continued use of “Intersex” by transactivists is appropriative, hegemonic, and instrumentalist. It is a deliberate, bad-faith move that uses a suite of medical conditions as a means of forcing their agenda, dragging DSD people with them, without their consent.

To put it simply–if you trouble, research, or think about gender, we want your work.

Somehow I suspect that they wouldn’t be interested in the writing of anybody posting here at B&W, despite the fact that we certainly “think about gender” and definitely “trouble” it. I don’t think they like our kind of thinking and troubling, however we identified, or whatever body parts we sport.

What did Scottish Labour vote against?

And Scottish Labour voted NO on that.

It’s very embittering, this kind of thing. I thought the Left had finally caught on, half a century ago, that women are people too, that women matter too, that it’s not cute or funny or inevitable that men treat women as brainless inferiors. I thought that lesson had been learned. Yet here we are again, as if all that had been so much hot air.

More “Fuck off, women, we don’t care.”

I’m so tired of the refusal to care.

Not for the first time, I ask what the hell is “transfeminism”? Fake feminism? Pretend feminism? Not-real feminism?

Sinister Wisdom, that styles itself a Multicultural Lesbian Literary & Art Journal, interrupts itself to talk about “trans feminisms” instead of actual feminism. So much for the Lesbian part.

Trans/Feminisms

Sinister Wisdom is seeking submissions of writing and artwork by folks across the gender spectrum for our issue Trans/Feminisms. Sinister Wisdom invites all trans, nonbinary, genderqueer, genderfluid, two-spirit, gender non conforming, intersex writers and artists to submit. To put it simply–if you trouble, research, or think about gender, we want your work.

So…does that include lesbians? Or no? Does it include lesbians who are gender nonconforming but not the other kind? Butch ok but femme stay away?

More to the point, why is a lesbian journal doing this? Is it because they think lesbians are now the domineering capitalist lords of the manor, oppressing and exploiting the poor starved trans people whose ribs are poking through their skin?

Sinister Wisdom is a multicultural lesbian literary & art journal that publishes four issues each year. Publishing since 1976, Sinister Wisdom works to create a multicultural, multi-class lesbian and queer space.

Perhaps that’s our answer. Lesbian and queer. Lesbian isn’t good enough any more, is that it? Lesbian equals Karen, is that it? You have to bring in some “queer” people to ward off the Karenization, is that it?

What perspectives do trans lives bring to the field of feminist thought and practice? What does it mean to hold a conversation about being trans? What does it mean to be a part of that conversation? How do the crossroads of difference affect the conversation? Trans/Feminisms is dedicated to exploring and celebrating transness. We seek work that appeals to and from transness in a range of mediums: interdisciplinary, genre-bending poetry, fiction, transcribed interviews, manifestos, essays, historical and theoretical deep dives, comic strips, visual art, photography, and beyond. Interviews, oral histories, intergenerational conversations, and collaborations are especially encouraged.

I long to read the historical and theoretical deep dives. I’m sure they’ll be more brilliant than we can possibly imagine.

The NY Times takes a close look at Trump’s immediate future:

On Friday, the judge overseeing Mr. Trump’s civil fraud case issued a final ruling that inflicted a staggering financial penalty. With interest, the former president has been ordered to pay about $450 million, a sum that threatens to wipe out a stockpile of cash, stocks and bonds that he amassed since leaving the White House. He will have only 30 days or so to either come up with the money or persuade an outside company to post a bond.

The judge, Arthur F. Engoron, also imposed several new restrictions on Mr. Trump and his family business. For three years, Mr. Trump cannot run any New York company, including portions of his own, nor can he obtain a loan from a New York bank. The same restrictions apply to his adult sons for a two-year period. And the family business will be under the thumb of a watchful outsider, a court-appointed monitor who can hamstring the company if she does not like what she sees.

This won’t, unfortunately, make him an instant pauper, but it will hinder and annoy him. Baby steps.

His lawyers are already contacting companies that might post the bond, according to two people with knowledge of the matter, though it is unclear if and when they will reach a deal.

You have to wonder what company is going to want to post a bond for Trump, given his history of not paying his debts. I suppose they could demand a huge enough deposit to make it worthwhile, but then would he be able to pay it?

The penalty in Friday’s decision, when combined with an $83.3 million judgment Mr. Trump is facing from a defamation trial involving the writer E. Jean Carroll, adds up to more than half a billion dollars, eclipsing his current collection of cash. Even for someone who measures his net worth in the billions, that sum could leave Mr. Trump more financially vulnerable than he has been in decades.

The former president derives much of his net worth from his properties, and if he runs out of cash, he might have to sell or mortgage one. Although he will not go bankrupt, because the value of those buildings far exceeds the penalty imposed by Justice Engoron, selling any real estate would be a personal affront to the former president, who glories in his properties. It also might not be easy: It often takes time to find a buyer willing to pay a good price.

Especially when the seller is Trump.

Justice Engoron’s other punishments took more direct aim at the Trump Organization’s way of doing business — most notably, extending the appointment of the independent monitor, Barbara Jones.

A former federal judge, Ms. Jones will be the equivalent of a corporate babysitter for the next three years. Justice Engoron granted her additional authority — he called it “enhanced monitorship” — and asked her to recommend an independent compliance director who will oversee the company’s financial reporting from within its ranks.

Already, Ms. Jones has been an irritant for the Trump Organization, reviewing its transactions and keeping an eye out for fraud. The company has paid her millions of dollars for her work and will have to pay millions more.

Ms. Jones’s presence could also scare away potential business partners and second-guess any new deals, further constraining a company that has been stuck in neutral since Mr. Trump ascended to the White House in 2017.

Fingers crossed.

Mr. Trump’s plan to secure a bond so that he need not immediately pay either the state or Ms. Carroll could prove challenging — and expensive. Mr. Trump must find a company willing to write one in spite of his polarizing presidential run and mounting legal woes. His lawyers would negotiate a deal with the company, which would charge a premium and could demand that Mr. Trump pledge cash and other liquid assets as collateral, legal experts said. Under New York law, he will also owe 9 percent interest until the appeal is resolved, meaning the size of the bond could reach $500 million or more.

And then his head will explode? Here’s hoping.

Another dude steps up.

Oh really.

They want to be the UK’s most inclusive, because celebrating diversity will make them perfect and supernatural. Well then why don’t they include women for a change? Why don’t they celebrate diversity by talking about women for a change? Why don’t they create an environment where women feel welcome for a change? Why is inclusion and diversity and celebration always about men who pretend to be women instead of women?

Or what about workers? Why not be inclusive of workers, celebrate the diversity of workers, create an environment where workers feel welcome?

Why is it always about the T?

You can’t sue people for saying that men are not women.

I know that’s too obvious to bother saying, but this guy…

First there’s the headline.

Help WOKEN Sue Darren Grimes – Transphobia Against Brianna Ghey

Help what? Is “woken” a new trans verb that means “wake up” or “rouse to action”? Are we being asked to help spur Sue Darren Grimes into being less sleepy?

Or is “woken” an adjective that applies to Sue Darren Grimes? Is Sue one of those boring woke people who keep prodding us to be more woke? Or “woken” for extra elegance?

And what does the part after the hyphen mean? What about Transphobia Against Brianna Ghey? What does it have to do with waking up Sue?

Well, none of that, apparently. It seems that “Woken” is a thing of some kind – a grouplet, a collective, an activism. And it seems that the person involved is not Sue Darren Grimes, but Darren Grimes, whom we are being urged to help this “Woken” entity sue. Not Sue, but sue.

Ok, language skills need some work, but I’m listening – what are “Woken” trying to sue this Darren Grimes for?

TRIGGER WARNING  the link below contains transphobic content.

On Wednesday 7th February at 12:26, Darren Grimes posted this sickening and abhorrent Tweet on Twitter/X which is still up and available for all to see:

‘I hate to break it to British politicians, but trans women are men. The horrific act of pure evil that was the murder of Brianna Ghey doesn’t change that.’

That’s it, that’s the grounds for suing.

I wonder if the people at “WOKEN” have any idea how many people have said, and tweeted, that trans women are men.

It’s true that there has been a hell of a lot of coercion of a hell of a lot of people to say that trans women are women, but it’s also true that there has been a hell of a lot of refusal, and that you can’t sue people for telling an obvious truth.

The buffoon behind this prank goes on:

Despite our efforts at WOKEN to contact Darren via Twitter as well as by email and telephone calls to his places of work (‘Unreasoned’ and GB News) to ask him to please recant and delete his post he refused to contact us and delete the hurtful and bigoted Tweet as we politely requested.

Imagine that – some stranger asks him (with a “please”!!) to delete a tweet and he does nothing. They requested politely! What more does he want?!

Darren’s steadfast refusal has unfortunately left us with little choice other than to commence the exploration of legal action against him

Ok come on now. That’s pushing it too far. Surely it’s parody. Surely nobody really thinks saying men are not women is grounds for legal action. Why single out this one tweet as if it were unusual? The buffoon can’t be that stupid.

to sue him for posting this Transphobic comment which is a Malicious Communication (as defined by the 1988 Malicious Crimes Act) and a Hate Crime (as defined by the Crime and Disorder act of 1998 and Section 66 of the Sentencing Act of 2020). 

No it isn’t. Next?

Trump ordered to pay $350 million.

A New York judge on Friday handed Donald J. Trump a crushing defeat in his civil fraud case, finding the former president liable for conspiring to manipulate his net worth and ordering him to pay a penalty of nearly $355 million plus interest that could wipe out his entire stockpile of cash.

But first he will appeal. I want to see him having to sell properties now.

Justice Engoron barred Mr. Trump for three years from serving in top roles at any New York company, including portions of his own Trump Organization. He also imposed a two-year ban on the former president’s adult sons and ordered that they pay more than $4 million each. One of them, Eric Trump, is the company’s de facto chief executive, and the ruling throws into doubt whether any member of the family can run the business in the near term.

Golly, they might have to find someone who isn’t a crook to do it.

In his unconventional style, Justice Engoron criticized Mr. Trump and the other defendants for refusing to admit wrongdoing for years. “Their complete lack of contrition and remorse borders on pathological,” he said.

Borders on shmorders on. Pathological R Trumps.

But there might be little Mr. Trump can do to thwart one of the judge’s most consequential punishments: extending for three years the appointment of an independent monitor who is the court’s eyes and ears at the Trump Organization. Justice Engoron also strengthened the monitor’s authority to watch for fraud and second-guess transactions that look suspicious.

Mr. Trump’s lawyers have railed against the monitor, Barbara Jones, saying that her work had already cost the business more than $2.5 million; the decision to extend her oversight of the privately held company could enrage the Trumps, who see her presence as an irritant and an insult.

Well good. They need to be irritated and insulted.

I saw this so…

[If you open the full tweet you get a view of his naked bum]

…so I had to look up this Senior Lecturer. The source is Middlesex University itself:

Dr T J Bacon

Pronouns: Xe/Xem/Xyrs (usage)

Producing artwork under the name tjb, Dr Bacon’s practice, framed as an artist-philosopher, extends across performance art, visal art, curation, socially engaged practice, transgender studies, queer theory, crip theory and queer phenomenology. Xis outputs manifest through the interdisciplinary visual arts and as an author. Xe has exhibited xis practice internationally for over 20 years and is the founder and artistic director of Tempting Failure, a festival international performance art staged in the UK since 2012.

Clearly Doc Bacon wrote that himself (and failed to spot the typo in “visal art”). It’s impressive that his outputs manifest, when duller more quotidian academics simply publish their work.

Is it just me or is there something a little suspect about that long list of items his “practice extends across”? Is he trying to make up for poverty of thought with wealth of list-making?

Also note “crip theory.” I assume that’s what ordinary mortals call disability studies or similar. Cute.

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Mote and beam.

CSIS’s comments come as provincial policies on gender-affirming surgeries and pronoun preferences are being hotly debated across the country.

And it looks like they’ve taken a side. There’s only one “side” whose potential for violence seems to concern them:

“CSIS assesses that the violent threat posed by the anti-gender movement is almost certain to continue over the coming year…

As I would be considered a part of the “anti-gender movement” by trans activists and their allies (of which we can now count CSIS), I might very well have my own CSIS file. I’m not flattering myself with some degree of inflated “importance,” I’ve just seen how this shit has played out in the UK with police forces deployed against limericks, ribbons, stickers, and simple statements of reality, all of which have been characterized and acted upon by the police as actual threats.

… representing the gender ideology ‘agenda,’”…

Yah gotta love those scare quotes around agenda. As if the idea of a gender ideology agenda is a delusional fantasy with no existence in the real world. So we must be just imagining the placement of male offenders in women’s prisons, the branding of watchful waiting as “conversion therapy,” the removal of public funding from women’s shelters refusing to serve TiMs, men taking spots on women’s sports teams, universities turning washroom facilities into de facto mixed sex ones for the sake of “inclusion,” unions and school boards defending the public performances of misogynistic AGP fetshists in classrooms, etc. So what would CSIS have us believe, that none of this is happening, or that this is all healthy, or that we must stay silent in the face of these things happening? The UK police actions noted above, and this very CSIS announcement are part of that very same “agenda.”

What violent rhetoric?

Saying that there are only two sexes in humans, and that nobody can change sex; saying that men are not women; saying “No.” All “violent” if you ask the wrong people, and likely the very people currently advising CSIS in its current efforts. I imagine that the threshold for “violence” is going to be quite low.

Also I wonder if Balsam has seen the violent rhetoric emanating from the pro-gender movement.

Just the heart-felt, passionate self-defence of a disadvantaged, marginalized, vulnerable community (which just happens to have the country’s security and intelligence service, and the governing party, as allies).

Wish us luck.

The CBC inciting violence against people who don’t believe in trans ideology:

Canada’s intelligence agency is warning that extremists could “inspire and encourage” serious violence against the 2SLGBTQI+ community — a threat the Canadian Security Intelligence Service says almost certainly will continue over the coming year.

CSIS’s comments come as provincial policies on gender-affirming surgeries and pronoun preferences are being hotly debated across the country.

“CSIS assesses that the violent threat posed by the anti-gender movement is almost certain to continue over the coming year and that violent actors may be inspired by the University of Waterloo attack to carry out their own extreme violence against the 2SLGBTQI+ community or against other targets they view as representing the gender ideology ‘agenda,'” said CSIS spokesperson Eric Balsam in an email to CBC News.

…

Balsam said that while violent rhetoric does not always lead to violence, “the ecosystem of violent rhetoric within the anti-gender movement, compounded with other extreme worldviews, can lead to serious violence.”

What violent rhetoric?

Also I wonder if Balsam has seen the violent rhetoric emanating from the pro-gender movement.