They call it Prick News for a reason

Jun 7th, 2019 | By
Category: Notes and Comment Blog

Damn, Pink News is horrible. It should just change its name to Trans News (which would be accurate in both senses).

That’s right, lead with the “misgendered” part, and also pretend not to believe the attack happened.

You can see it’s being ratioed, but Pink News won’t listen.

Let’s see how Lily Wakefield reports this story:

Radical feminist Julie Bindel claimed that she was “physically attacked” by a transgender woman after speaking at an event at Edinburgh University on Wednesday (June 5).

This is Pink News, yet Wakefield forgets to say that Julie is a lesbian. Too busy monstering her, it seems.

We get Julie’s tweet about the attack, and then

The person referred to is Cathy Brennan, a trans woman misgendered as “a man” by Bindel, who claims she “lost her s[hi]t” but that she did not touch Bindel. Bindel later told The Scotsman that she was “almost” punched.

This is what Pink News focuses on – not the raging aggression by a male-bodied person against a lesbian feminist but the lesbian feminist’s “misgendering” her attacker.

Even if you think trans women should generally be called women, referred to as “she,” validated as women, I would think that occasions when trans women rely on their male bodies and voices and aggression to intimidate women would be an exception. Because that’s what was going on here. This is what makes me so furious about male displays of “losing their shit” at women – it’s their lack of inhibition in summoning their physical advantages to make the woman feel fear. I’ve known so many men who should know better but do this anyway. Joe “Cathy” Brennan wasn’t performing femininity in this incident, he was performing male rage, and he was doing that in aid of terrorizing a woman who makes him angry by…the ironies are infinite…not believing he’s literally a woman. “CALL ME A WOMAN YOU FUCKING CUNT.” Er, no.

But Lily Wakefield writes for Pink News, so none of that makes it into the story. What does make it into the story is the opposition to the panel.

The event was a panel discussion on “women’s sex-based rights.” The event page for the panel states that they planned to discuss “future ways forward for women’s rights in a world of complex sex and gender relations.”

Staff and students at Edinburgh University protested against the talk taking place, branding it “transphobic,” amassing more than 1,300 signatures on a petition against the event, holding a silent protest outside and organising a rally for later in the evening.

“Our view is that there is misinformation, misunderstanding, and fear-mongering presenting cisgender women’s rights as being opposed to trans and non-binary people’s rights,” said the school of social and political science student and staff collective who created the petition.

“We affirm that trans women’s rights are women’s rights and that cis and trans women should be standing together to combat gender oppression.”

When do trans women ever do that though? Apart from the ones who get called “truscum” for their pains. Trans women of the Joe “Cathy” Brennan type have zero interest in standing with “cis” women, they’re far too busy threatening and monstering women they call TERFs.

The Edinburgh University staff Pride network also spoke out against the event, and every member of the network’s committee has now resigned, claiming that the university censored their opposition.

Jonathan MacBride, co-chair of the network, told PinkNews: “Instead of supporting us, supporting our position, they chose to censor us, saying in future we had to ask permission before taking a stand on anything.”

He said of the silent protest: “Staff and students came together beforehand to give each other strength and to make placards and badges. The solidarity was a strong message of staff and students together, protesting an unbalanced, one-sided event.”

Subtext: Julie Bindel is on the Wrong Side and had it coming.

When asked to comment, Bindel declined to say whether she had filed a police report against Brennan but told PinkNews: “I despise your woman-hating, anti-lesbian rag, and would rather give Donald Trump a massage than speak to you.”

Bindel subsequently claimed on Twitter that PinkNews was “more-or-less calling me a liar” after reaching [we reached] out to her for the purposes of journalistic fact-checking and to offer a right of reply.

The state of that: a journalist who can’t even keep her subjects and verbs straight. She has Julie reaching out to herself.

A couple of responses to the tweet linking the article.

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