Forced teaming in journalism:

A public consultation is under way on planned laws to ban conversion therapy for sexuality or gender in Scotland.

Sexuality and “gender” [i.e. gender ideology] are two different things and should not be discussed as a pair.

The proposed ban has raised concerns from those who fear attempts to counsel people struggling with their identity could be seen as conversion therapy.

Conversion therapy refers to practices “aiming to change or supress a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity”.

Only because captured news outlets like the BBC keep shoving them together. Conversion therapy for sexual orientation has nothing to do with awareness that people can’t change sex.

During a visit to LGBT Health and Wellbeing in Edinburgh, [Equalities Minister Emma] Roddick told BBC Scotland News the ban would apply to “so-called therapy services” or “coercive behaviour” that tried to change someone’s sexuality or the gender they identified as.

Not the same thing, not the same kind of thing.

Ms Roddick added that a parent would only be criminalised if they caused harm to their child who was coming out as gay or transgender.

See above.

However, concerns have been raised about the scope of the proposed laws and the lack of clear definitions in the legislation. The LGB Alliance, a charity supporting lesbian, gay and bisexual rights, said they were concerned that new laws on gender identity could outlaw any response to a child questioning their gender “other than affirmation of their self-diagnosis”.

Scottish trustee Rhona Hotchkiss, a former women’s prison governor, said: “We know that the majority of unhappy children presenting at gender clinics describe themselves as same-sex attracted. The affirmation-at-all-costs approach hurts confused young people – most of whom would grow up to be happily lesbian, gay or bisexual if left alone by the gender industry.”

See how the two are different? Growing up to be happily lesbian, gay or bisexual is a good outcome; being “affirmed” as trapped in the wrong body, not so much.

She added: “‘Transing away the gay’ is the real conversion therapy.”

Ms Hotchkiss also questioned why the consultation document used the term LGBTQI+ throughout because same-sex attracted people had their own needs and were disadvantaged when “force-teamed” in campaigns by TQ+ lobbyists.

Exactly. BBC: listen to Ms Hotchkiss.

Ah they’ve noticed.

Yes, it could, and yes, it is, and we’ve been dealing with that for years now. Feminist women who don’t believe in magic gender have been monstered, punished, ostracized, expelled, called Nazis and cunts and all the rest of it.

Ok then.

A tiny spot of light at the end of the tunnel.

Quite a startling assertion, in a piece that’s not even about trans ideology.

…my experience of an all-girls’ school, followed by twice as long as a trustee of a prison charity, informed a lot of my politics, including why I became a transgender ally. Before I had thought seriously about trans rights, and the immeasurable preciousness of any human being with the courage to live their most meaningful and truthful life…

What???

So Zoe Williams is saying that trans people, as such, just because they are trans people, are immeasurably precious because they have “the courage to live their most meaningful and truthful life”?

There’s so much that’s absurd about that. Where to begin?

One, are trans people the only people who have that particular form of courage? And by the way what’s so scary about it? Also what does it mean? And why is it “truthful” to claim to be something you’re not? Why is it so truthful that you’re immeasurably precious because you claim it?

Two, why is that more of a reason to think people are “immeasurably precious” than any number of other things? Like altruism, generosity, empathy, for example?

Three, why does a quality that’s about the self deserve such hyperbolic flattery? In fact why does it deserve any? I think people are all too ready and eager to “live their most meaningful and truthful life” at the expense of other people. What’s so great about it? Why present it as heroic and rare?

Four, how the hell is it living a “truthful life” when it starts from a gigantic lie?

This ideology rots people’s brains.

They’re already doing it.

Over here we have women bleeding to death because the hospital refuses to end their pregnancies, and over on this other side we have women being strip searched by male cops and female cops forced to strip search men because the police refuse to protect women.

Women’s Rights Network reports:

In December 2021, the National Police Chiefs Council (NPCC) approved a policy paper proposing that officers be permitted to strip and even intimately search suspects of the opposite sex if the officer self-identified as the same “gender” as the person being searched.

In other words male cops can grope female suspects if the male cops claim to be women.

The policy – which has been accepted and is now being implemented by the majority of police forces across the country – does not refer to the protected characteristic of sex. Instead, it proposes that self-identified “gender” [be] used in place of sex in contravention of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (PACE). PACE states that searches involving the removal of more than outer clothing are required to be conducted by, and only in the presence of, an officer or staff member of the same sex, and out of public view.

By “outer clothing” do they mean coats and sweaters? Or do they mean everything but underwear? Because I don’t think men should be searching women who are stripped down to underpants, or underpants and bras.

The policy paper made it clear that anyone who objects to being searched by a member of the opposite sex, and any officer refusing to carry out such a search, may be the subject of a hate crime or a non-crime hate incident if this is based on “discriminatory views”.

This is not a hypothetical situation. Many forces already have officers who identify as the opposite sex including West Midlands where 12 officers identified as the opposite sex when asked in February 2023. 

Women can get hauled in by the police for calling a man a man, and now we learn that they can then be stripped and searched by men who pretend to be women.

Utopia, right?

Idaho wants to see women killed by their own pregnancies.

The Supreme Court agreed on Friday to hear a challenge to Idaho’s near-total ban on abortions, which the Biden administration said conflicted with a federal statute that allowed for some exceptions. In scheduling arguments for April, the court also temporarily revived the law, which had been partly blocked by a federal trial judge.

…

President Biden criticized the court’s action. “Today’s Supreme Court order allows Idaho’s extreme abortion ban to go back into effect and denies women critical emergency abortion care required by federal law,” he said in a statement.

It’s not even as if the woman’s death will mean the fetus will survive. The fetus will die along with her, but that’s ok, it’s worth it to make sure the uppity bitch dies.

Under the state law, Solicitor General Elizabeth B. Prelogar told the justices, “an emergency-room physician who concludes that a pregnant woman needs an abortion to stabilize a condition that would otherwise threaten serious and irreversible harm may not provide the necessary care unless and until the patient’s condition deteriorates to the point where an abortion is needed to save her life.”

Remember Savita Halappanavar and Galway University Hospital? That’s exactly what they did – wait until her condition had deteriorated so far that she ended up dead. That’s what Idaho wants: more of that kind of thing.

H/t Tim Harris

Man cheats woman in sport, BBC weeps crocodile tears for the man.

A transgender pool champion says she received “vile” and “horrific” abuse online after her opponent refused to play her in a final.

That’s their lede. Not “Man insists on competing against woman in pool final” but “Man receives vile horrific abuse for cheating woman in a final.”

Why does he automatically matter more than she does? Why is fairness to her less important than his feefees? Why does he get to cheat in the first place?

Lynne Pinches conceded the Women’s Champion of Champions tournament to Harriet Haynes in Prestatyn.

Pinches said she did it out of “fairness”, claiming male-born players who identify as women have a competitive advantage.

Fuck you, Beeb. Fuck your scare-quotes on “fairness” and fuck your “claiming.” Of course men have an advantage.

It follows an apparent U-turn by the sport’s governing bodies, the World Eightball Pool Federation (WEPF) and Ultimate Pool Group, on its transgender policy. In August players were told “only naturally born women would be eligible to play in their ladies’ categories”, but that decision has since been reversed. “When the U-turn happened, and the announcement happened, it absolutely devastated not just me but loads of players,” said a tearful Pinches in an interview with TalkTV.

But the BBC doesn’t care about them. Only the men matter.

Haynes generously says he would get out if…

“If the rules were changing and there [were] categoric evidence that I had a massive advantage over someone else, I would stop playing in female pool. That would be the end of it. Trans women are not a threat to pool. We’re not coming over in droves… it’s a very small percentage. And there’s nothing to fear.”

Ahhhhh isn’t that kind. If there were categoric evidence that he had massive advantage then he would stop. Non-categoric evidence that he has a large advantage isn’t good enough, he’ll go right on taking that large advantage, non-categoric-like.

Thanks, BBC. We feel so loved.

Comerford is considering legal action. I know what that’s like. I consider a lot of things. I don’t do them, I just consider them.

Nonsense. Comerford is dim-witted. He parades this fact about himself regularly. He’s not sharp. He’s not a thinker. He’s not good at argument. He’s not even bright enough to realize this very tweet is not going to work out well for him.

Cruel and unusual punishment…

A mother-of-four claims she pleaded guilty to a crime she didn’t commit to avoid returning to a prison that housed two [male] trans inmates locked up for murder and sex assault, MailOnline can reveal.

Amanda Benson, 42, from Inverkip, Scotland, was imprisoned on remand at HMP Greenock with the two trans women – murderer Alex Stewart, 34, and sexual assaulter Laura Miller, 30.

They haven’t had any surgeries or “gender-affirming” hormones, she says.

Stewart – previously known as Alan Baker – was jailed for 19 years for stabbing father-of-two John Weir, 36, to death after they met on a dating site. The trans prisoner reportedly started dating a female child killer in HMP Greenock in 2020. 

Miller was jailed for almost two years in 2022 after she sexually assaulted a woman who had taken sleeping medication on multiple occasions in 2017 and even filmed one of the attacks, in which she made an offensive sexual remark about her.

…

‘It’s terrifying to be in there with them so [I did anything] to get out of there. I felt the threat that I could have been raped by these men and that could have led to me falling pregnant.

‘They were both quite tall. One was very heavy. He dressed like a man. The other guy tried to wear sparkly jeans. Neither had had any surgery. They just said they were women and wanted to be in a women’s prison. We can’t leave. We are locked up with them, no matter what.’

Cruel enough?

The cells at Greenock Prison don’t have showers in them, meaning women have to use communal showers.  

Rhona Hotchkiss, who was Governor of HMP Greenock until 2019, said: ‘We had three or four trans women in at once. It was a horrific situation. None of them had identified as trans before they came into prison. The behaviour was appalling. They were clearly, most of them, there for sexual reasons.’

She added: ‘Male staff are not allowed to go anywhere near those showers but trans women can.’

Despite the appalling behavior.

No you’re inappropriate.

A civil servant was told by a Whitehall investigator that it was inappropriate to say there are two sides to the trans debate.

…

On March 11 2021, civil servants in the Department for Work and Pensions met online for an International Women’s Day event entitled “What trans is and some of the issues faced”. The call, in which officials were encouraged to submit written questions in an online chat, featured a transgender woman civil servant discussing issues faced by trans people in the UK.

In other words the civil service summoned a man to talk about himself for an International Women’s Day event. As if that’s not insulting enough by itself, what he talked about was his fantasy of being a woman.

One civil servant was subsequently investigated and found guilty of breaching the department’s behaviour policy and rules on harassment for their comments on the call.

Among the remarks made by the civil servant, and branded as “inappropriate comments relating to trans women” by a DWP investigator, were the comments: “One of the things I struggle to understand as a lesbian myself is, how can trans women be lesbian as lesbian is same sex attracted, not gender?”, “I find the term cis very offensive”, “Sport is segregated because there is a difference” and “What if you don’t believe in gender? I don’t”.

So the conversation was about men pretending to be women, and a lesbian was punished for saying what she thought. Happy International Women’s Day!

The civil servant’s comment that “I think IWD should centre [on] women really” was found “to exclude trans women from the relevance of International Women’s Day” and was therefore inappropriate.

Hey! You know what’s inappropriate? Talking about men who cosplay as women on International Women’s Day!

When the civil servant was accused on the call by fellow officials of displaying “Terf [Trans exclusionary radical feminists] behaviour”, the civil servant responded by saying: “STOP BEING INSULTING”.

The investigation found the latter comment to be “not the appropriate manner in which to raise concerns about others behaviour/language as writing in all Caps letters is interpreted as aggressive and shouting when read out”.

Jeezus. I hope she sought and found a much better job with much better people.

Hey kids, people swap sexes in myths and fairy tales, therefore it’s totally possible for people to swap sexes in real life. People can fly in myths and fairy tales, therefore etc. Animals can talk in myths and fairy tales, therefore etc. There’s no end to the possibilities!

University of Tennessee religious studies academic has the skinny:

State legislatures across the United States have introduced over 400 bills to limit transgender Americans’ rights. Many of these bills’ sponsors, such as the Christian nonprofit Alliance Defending Freedom, cite Christian values as well as the values of the other Abrahamic faiths – Judaism and Islam – to justify their anti-trans positions.

But of course she doesn’t pause to tell us what rights specifically “transgender Americans” have that are different from the rights Americans in general have.

The Alliance Defending Freedom claims that Christians, Jews and Muslims view gender as binary and defined only by biology, though these religions’ diverse followers actually hold a range of views on LGBTQ+ issues. Historically, these religions were often more accepting of varied gender identities before colonialism imposed binary gender as a universal concept.

Religious values from multiple traditions have supported transgender identity. As a scholar of Buddhism and gender, I know that several Buddhist texts treat gender as fluid. One such text is the Lotus Sutra, one of the most popular Buddhist scriptures in East Asia. Its core message is that everyone, no matter their gender or status, has the potential to become a Buddha.

The Lotus Sutra conveys its message of universal Buddhahood in several stories that depict transformations between male and female bodies. For example, a dragon girl instantly transforms into the masculine body of a Buddha, proving that female bodies are not barriers to awakening.

Well, that’s stories for you. Stories can include magic in a way that real life can’t. Stories can have people fly, converse with animals, go back in time – you name it, some storyteller will have thought of it. The fact that it’s in a story, including a “scripture,” doesn’t demonstrate that it’s a reality, it demonstrates only that it’s something people can imagine. We can imagine way more magical stuff than we can actually make happen.

Originally a comment by Sastra on Once and for all.

If you’re going to make an argument which ought to rest on truth and principle, slipping in “it doesn’t happen a lot” is a fatal flaw. It tacitly admits that the truth and principles behind what you’re advocating are weak.

If we think the authorities in Iran should stop punishing women for not wearing a hijab, reassuring them that they can repeal the law because don’t worry, most of the women in Iran will dress properly and they’ll hardly even notice the ones who don’t undercuts women’s freedom from constraint. Now it’s a numbers game. How many women flaunting their uncovered heads should it take for the modesty laws to come back? How many transwomen would have to dominate sports for NWLC to admit that yeah, they were wrong so now let’s ban them from women’s teams? 2%? 10%? 50%? 90%?

The truth is that they’re not justifying a law, they’re using a stalling tactic. If, in 5 or 10 years time, there’s no possible way to deny that TW are indeed taking over women’s sports, the gender ideologues will find a way to celebrate that and pretend they never said a damn thing about how TW are just a negligible blip on the radar, be a sport and let them play. It’ll be “girls born with natural gifts belong there.” Hypocrites.

Originally a comment by NightCrow on Once and for all.

From Wikipedia, s.v. National Women’s Law Center, citing annual reports from 2013–2016:

The organization receives financial support from a variety of institutions aligned on women’s rights policies. This includes … reproductive health organizations, and pharmaceutical companies. Notable donors are Bayer, … Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), … among others.

For some reason, the latest annual report made public by NWLC is the one for 2015– 2016, which can be found linked from this page.

I note that Bayer Pharmaceuticals is in the list of donors who gave $100,000 and above. One of their products, Androcur, is a hormone medication used as a feminizing treatment for males.

Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America is listed simply as PhRMA. They are a lobby group, reportedly. Their donation was in the $5,000 – $9,999 bracket.

Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer gave between $25,000 & $49,999. They sell spironolactone, a testosterone suppressant, under the trade name Aldactone.

Another donor in the $5,000 – $9,999 bracket, Agile Therapeutics, apparently offers ‘pelvic and gender health physical therapy’ to help patients having problems after ‘gender-affirming surgeries’.

The list of donors is a long one, and there may well be more on the list who are making a nice thing out of the transitioning craze.

I do wonder why National Women’s Law Center hasn’t posted any annual reports for 2016–2017, 2027–2018, 2018–2019, etc etc. They have posted annual financial statements up to 2022, but those don’t include the names of donors.

A month ago the National Women’s Law Center announced:

Once and For All: This Is Why We Support Trans Women and Girls in Sports

It’s a nice touch, that “once and for all” – like a fed-up parent to a whiny child persistently demanding ice cream right before dinner. They frame themselves as the adults and feminists who know that men are not women as bratty stubborn won’t shut up toddlers.

In this blog, we are going to debunk—once and for all—some of the biggest lies we’ve been force fed by fake feminists.  

Lies? Force fed? Fake?

This is, remember, the National Women’s Law Center, yet they talk to us like this.

Lie #1: Trans women have an unfair advantage in sports. 

First off, the small number of trans and intersex girls and women athletes have NOT demonstrated any categorical “dominance” or overwhelming advantage.

Oh I see…no categorical dominance or overwhelming advantage. It’s just mild cheating, so it’s ok. Is that it? They’re going with that?

Second, this notion that trans girls have an overall competitive advantage in sports also implies that every single cisgender woman is physically inferior, which feeds into sexist stereotypes and pits women against women. 

Oh do shut up. That ship sailed long ago. They might as well say the notion that women have an advantage in the ability to make new humans feeds into sexist stereotypes. Men can’t make new humans; that’s not a stereotype but a reality.

Finally, this notion overlooks the fact that class and money are often responsible for competitive advantages in sports (i.e., access to private coaching, better facilities, better sports equipment, and specialized training).  

No it doesn’t. Of course it doesn’t. The claim is not that the male advantage in sports is the only advantage there is, it’s just that men have an advantage in sports. That last one is incredibly feeble for a bunch of lawyers.

Lie #2: Trans women will take opportunities away from cis women. 

We have SO much to say on this point. 

First, there are actually very few trans people in competitive sports—and the success of those trans people has, for the most part, been exaggerated to perpetuate transphobia.

So a little bit of unfairness to women and girls is fine.

They are so lost.

When even the Post Office is on the TQ train…

The Post Office has defended its use of the word “queer”  following an outcry from activists.

Responding to criticisms about its use of the term, the Post Office wrote online: “Allow us to educate. ‘Queer’ can be used as an umbrella term for those who do not identify as heterosexual or straight. It can mean many different things to people but is a way of uniting those to identify as their authentic self.”

Nope not gonna allow you to “educate,” you patronizing clueless gits.

The critics said the word was a hateful slur often used by violent homophobes.

They added that the Post Office wouldn’t “dream” of advocating use of the N-word, which they felt was similarly offensive.

But the Post Office rebuffed condemnation and said its partnership with charity and museum Queer Britain was evidence the description was acceptable.

Acceptable to the kind of people who accept that kind of thing. Yes of course it is, as is everything, while other say they are wrong to accept that kind of thing.

Bev Jackson, the co-founder of LGB Alliance, told The Telegraph: “Many lesbians and gay men reject the word ‘queer’ as a slur, one often uttered before a vicious beating. Others reject it because it has been claimed by straight people as a fashionable identity.”

Last year, LGB Alliance released a report entitled Don’t Call Me Queer which found 90 per cent of those surveyed felt uncomfortable with the word.

See also: “bitch.” That’s a word that a hell of a lot of people think is “acceptable,” including in its traditional role as an insult to women. They’re all wrong.

A Post Office spokesman said: “We support Pride month and events every year and respond to questions about our support on our social media channels. We’re proud to have previously worked with the charity Queer Britain, the UK’s LGBTQ+ museum.

“They say that language changes and that whilst the term ‘queer’ has long been a term of abuse for LGBTQ+ people, it is being reclaimed by younger people especially who they say embrace it proudly as their identity.”

Therefore it’s brilliant for the Post Office to embrace it too? Seriously??? It agrees that it has long been a term of abuse but says younger people are “reclaiming” it and that somehow makes it acceptable for a not at all young institution to “reclaim” it too, even after many people point out the it remains a term of abuse???

Unbelievable.

Womb-renting dressed up as “diversity” and “choice”:

Surrogacy isn’t “diversity” in the touchy-feely pwogwessive way they want us to think. It’s different, but it ain’t progressive.

Replies are harsh.

The Royal College of Midwives piece is creepy as fuck.

My Surrogacy Journey (MSJ) bring this webinar to raise awareness for all healthcare professionals involved in maternity services.

But it’s not “maternity” services; it’s rent-a-womb services.

Michael and Wes, the co-founders of MSJ, will be sharing their experiences of maternity services and their pathway to parenthood, focussing on both the difference that high quality, equitable care from midwives can make, and the harmful impact poor, stigmatised care can have on a surrogate and intended parents.

All about the men, the men who rent women to gestate and push out their luxury bespoke paid-for babies.

They will also provide a brief overview of their extensive campaigning and the change in direction of both of their careers, all due to them both becoming parents through surrogacy.

Parents through renting women.

It’s the National WOMEN’S Law Center…but now it systematically hides that filthy word.

No, it won’t force “people” to wait until they’re on the brink of death, it will force WOMEN to do that.

If you treat the word “women” as an obscenity then get out. Go set up your own group; get out of any group that was set up as and has always been a group for and about and by women. If you think that word is poison then get out get out get OUT.

Who does Aidan Comerford think he is??

Bev of course is not doing any such thing, and many people are swapping their current headers for the one Comerford objects to. Neener neener bully-boy.

Originally a comment by Bruce Gorton on Everyone is on the same level.

A part of me agrees with having singular standards. I’d quite like it if Konstantin Kisin gave it a bash.

You see the standard I have is that one shouldn’t take what someone says in a specific context completely out of that context in order to demonize them.

And that appears to me to be what is happening to Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy here.

To put what she is saying into context, her filmography includes A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness. It is about a girl who survived an attempted honor killing by her father and uncle, only for the Pakistani public to pressure her into forgiveness – so the people who tried to kill would get to go back home.

An earlier documentary was Saving Face, about two women who survived acid attacks. Women in the Holy Kingdom is about feminists in Saudi Arabia.

As a man I do not object to being disturbed by subject matter like this. She should absolutely be happy that men find this stuff disturbing, and it is the precise sort of stuff that should be made with that in mind.

I am extremely opposed to this idea that I should never be disturbed, and generally when the shoe is on the other foot, well, if the shoe was on the other foot Kisin would be championing Sharmeen’s right to express ideas people find disturbing.

So far as to whether she’s the right person to revive Starwars, I don’t know. Her background in politics and economics could be useful for fixing the biggest flaw in Disney Starwars – the lack of solid world building.

In the OT – we know why the emperor wants to build the Death Star, it is because he wants to devolve governance to the system lords, and the Death Star is there to keep them from taking the opportunity to rebel. The conflict is between the empire that rules by fear, and the resistance which believes in rule by consent.

You never really get just what the First Order really believes in, what its ultimate big picture vision for the galaxy is. Having someone come in with a background in politics and economics, if she can bring some of that into the story, may well be what the series needs.