A few days ago Jolyon Maugham gave the world his views on the Cass report on gender identity services, in great detail and at much length, because he is…an expert on the subject? No, but he plays one on Twitter. The final point he makes is that doing nothing is not doing nothing.

Let me explain why I make that – vigorous – criticism. She recognises, several times, that doing nothing is not a neutral act, eg: pic.twitter.com/KO16TFLXRI

— Jo Maugham (@JolyonMaugham) March 10, 2022

If you are a young trans woman, absent puberty blockers, your voice will drop and you will develop an adam's apple and this will make it very, very difficult for you to 'pass' as what

The tribunal is looking into the issue of the hostile work environment too.

BC: Looking at DM from Mr Clemence. Says beyond this she was disseminating to whole office re gender of actual staff members. Not true?
AG: Don't know where MC got that from
BC: not true
AG: I do know she was saying about not realitiy and was considered innappropraite by some ppl

— Tribunal Tweets at #ForstaterTribunal (@tribunaltweets) March 15, 2022

BC: There had obviuosly been lots of discussion and comment about the claimant that led to her being misrepresented as bigot attacking collegues

AG: I didn't see any of that. MC not a water cooler person. But yes there are inaccuracies here

— Tribunal Tweets at

Originally a comment by latsot on You conflate identity and reality.

One of the issues here is that ‘identity’ is such a heavily overloaded word. I mean ‘overloaded’ in the technical, computer science sense: it has lots of different meanings which can be used only somewhat interchangeably. The overall semantics might be broadly the same, but you’ll quickly run into trouble if you use the wrong one.

I think two different senses of ‘identity’ that are relevant here are:

1. Stuff I make up in my head. How I feel. What I want to be seen as. Let’s call this ‘idenniny’.

2. Assertions made about me by the proper official bodies, documents etc. Let’s call this ‘identity’.

So on … Read the rest

More from Luke Easley:

BC: It is clearly not a proselytising blog. Sets out issues, invites discussion.
LE: I disagree.

— Tribunal Tweets at #ForstaterTribunal (@tribunaltweets) March 15, 2022

“Offensive” he whines. Easy for him. Predatory men aren’t a threat to him.

BC: Did you understand that there are two parts to the argument for single sex spaces. The first is that most acts of violence are committted by men and women need single sex spaces for that reason
LE: Understand that now yes

— Tribunal Tweets at #ForstaterTribunal (@tribunaltweets) March 15, 2022

He understands it now. He’s the HR guy, and was the HR guy when they pushed Maya out, but he didn’t understand that there are predatory men, … Read the rest

Joan Smith on Keir Starmer’s Message to the Estonians:

Employing the forensic skills that made him a QC, he homed in on the most significant issue of the day: “Trans women are women”, he declared. “And that is not just my view — that is actually the law”.

The Estonians may have thought they had bigger things to worry about, what with Putin having his tantrum right next door, but Starmer knew better.

To be cruelly frank, women are being gaslighted. Labour’s leaders say they believe in single-sex spaces, but what does that mean when they also insist that trans women are no different from natal women? Starmer’s own position is a statement of the law as he

There’s just so much daftery in Luke Easley’s replies at the tribunal.

BC: This presupposes claimaints views would damage that
LE: More about actions
BC: Why mention misgendering, MF had told you she would not.
LE: Didn't feel sure that was 100% sure

— Tribunal Tweets at #ForstaterTribunal (@tribunaltweets) March 15, 2022

In other words the head of HR at this economics research institution “had a problem” with renewing Maya’s contract because he thought she might possibly “misgender” someone even though she had told him she would not. Apart from anything else it’s just so tiny and childish.

BC: You say no final decision taken at the meeting
LE: yes
BC 3 options on the table: a) renew fellowship b)

Lia gonna make history this week.

This week, a male collegiate swimmer who identifies as a woman will compete in the women’s NCAA Div. 1 Women’s Swimming & Diving Championships. Lia Thomas is the top seed in both the 200-yard and 500-yard freestyle races and will make history as one of the first openly transgender athletes in women’s collegiate sports, no matter how he performs.

It’s a crappy kind of history to make though – embarrassing as opposed to glorious. Or not so much embarrassing as shameful. Shameful of him, and shameful of all the people letting it happen. People would get this if it were a huge muscular man “making history” by playing Little League baseball, but somehow … Read the rest

Wait though. Hold the phone. We may have a case of corpsephobia here.

Corpsegender is a xenogender so surely Luke Easley is violating his own principles.… Read the rest

His view.

But then Luke Easley is denying Maya’s reality, and not only Maya’s but many other people’s too, many many many other people’s. Furthermore he’s denying an objective, material, factual reality, and furthermore again he’s denying an objective reality that is at the root of the fundamental human inequality, that between women and men. That’s a lot of reality-denial for a guy who wants to banish women for denying an eccentric new fantasy-based “reality” about being Born In The Wrong Body.… Read the rest

Life under Russian occupation:

Russian soldiers patrol the streets of Berdyansk in cars and armoured vehicles marked with the “Z” symbol that denotes the Russian occupying force.

Local government officials in this city in southern Ukraine, which has been controlled by Russian troops for the past two weeks, have been kicked out of their offices, and the local radio station plays Soviet ballads and Russian pop songs, interspersed with excerpts from Vladimir Putin’s speeches and news items about Ukraine being “liberated from Nazis”.

Many towns in southern Ukraine are already under Russian occupation.

In Berdyansk, a port city to the west of Mariupol with a population of a little over 100,000, the majority of city councillors have remained loyal

From the Maya Forstater tribunal today [LE is Luke Easley, a Vice President at the Center for Global Development]:

BC: We have a tweet saying ,so if a load of people stopped identifying as women they could get paid more, stop being harassed. Do you understand point claimant is making?

— Tribunal Tweets at #ForstaterTribunal (@tribunaltweets) March 14, 2022

BC: Is your point that claimant must not express belief in importance, relevance, immutability of sex at all – because you think that's denying some people's reality?

— Tribunal Tweets at #ForstaterTribunal (@tribunaltweets) March 14, 2022

LE: identify is reality – without identity there's jsut a corpse

BC: I suggest that you are struggling with this because you can't step outside

The first two sentences of this Spectator piece by Stephen Daisley need a post of their own before I read the rest.

Sir Keir Starmer’s interpretation of the Equality Act has caused something of a stir. The Labour leader cited the Brown-era legislation to support his assertion that ‘trans women are women’ and that this ‘happens to be the law in the United Kingdom’.

What does equality have to do with the assertion that “trans women are women”?

Even if the Act does say that (which apparently it doesn’t), what does equality have to do with it? Nothing. “Equality” doesn’t mean “you get to force everyone to agree with whatever you say about yourself.” Even if the fatuous repetition of … Read the rest

An item from yesterday:

She’s wrong Nimco. Surprised at you.

— Lynne Featherstone (@lfeatherstone) March 13, 2022

This is of interest because Featherstone is a former LibDem MP.

I’m clear thinking and liberal and based in principles of equality. I thought you were too.

— Lynne Featherstone (@lfeatherstone) March 13, 2022

That’s a lot of bad packed into one brief retort. The final sentence is a passive-aggressive insult, but it’s the first that’s so striking – flatter yourself in public much?

I stand up for women Nimco – it’s just a kinder and more generous version than yourself. Perhaps more understanding and compassion might help you. Always willing to discuss. The objective is equality – which used to matter to

We live in confused times.

Headline: She Killed Two Women. At 83, She Is Charged With Dismembering a Third.

Subhead: Harvey Marcelin was charged with murder after a head was found in her Brooklyn apartment. Officials said it belonged to a dismembered body discovered in a shopping cart.

The reporters:

The story:

An 83-year-old Brooklyn woman convicted twice of killing women she lived with was charged with murder on Thursday, after investigators found a head in her apartment that, officials said, belonged to a body discovered in a shopping cart last week.

Harvey Marcelin, who had served decades in prison for murder and manslaughter before her release in 2019, was arrested March 4 and was initially charged with concealment

Terry Gross talked to Masha Gessen about Putin’s war on Ukraine last Thursday.

My guest, Masha Gessen, is a Russian-American journalist who reported in late January and February from Ukraine, then went to Moscow after the invasion. On the night Putin shut down the last remaining independent source of TV news, Gessen was at that studio. Gessen’s dispatches are being published in The New Yorker, where Gessen is a staff writer. Gessen left Moscow on Thursday and is speaking to us from Tbilisi in the Republic of Georgia.

For 20 years, Gessen was a journalist in Moscow and had been the chief correspondent for Russia’s leading news magazine until it became impossible to report the real news. After that, Gessen

Another they does an interview.

Kae Tempest is perched at a table outside a station-side cafe, playing with a cigarette. Murphy, Tempest’s alaskan malamute, stirs as I approach, and on clocking me, Tempest returns the cigarette – still unlit – to their chest pocket. For years, Tempest’s long curly barnet was a trademark look. Today, though, wearing white trainers, upturned jeans and a turquoise jacket, their hair is short, a neat fade that, Tempest says, they still occasionally catch themselves admiring.

Got it? Tempest is special. Tempest is a they, Tempest perches and plays and has a malamute, Tempest has short hair.

In August 2020, in an Instagram post, Tempest came out as non-binary. They announced their

Arbeit macht frei, prostitution is empowering.

A clinic which receives NHS funding has been promoting prostitution as a way for transgender people to pay for their transition treatment, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.

Being a sex worker ‘can be useful and sometimes empowering’, according to a guide produced by CliniQ, a sexual counselling service for transgender people at King’s College Hospital in London. It adds: ‘It can help us pay for parts of our transition.’

Well of course it can; money is money. It can help pay for, or just pay for, anything; that’s how money works. Robbing banks can help pay for stuff too, unless you get caught.

Entitled Cruising: A Trans Guy’s Guide To The Gay

Not helping what?

First, to repeat myself, I hate this use of “hit” and “hit out at” and “attack” for argument and disagreement. It frames dissent as physical violence, and that’s not a useful or intelligent way to frame it. Nobody hit anybody, Rowling was not hit, she was not hit out at, she didn’t attack the Scottish government. There’s way too much talk of violence in this discussion already, and newspapers shouldn’t be adding to it via stupid metaphors.

Second, nonsense. Women have rights too and we are allowed to remind everyone of that, and insist on keeping them, and resist efforts to take them away.

Third, yes she is “helping.” Who put Slater and Harvie in charge of … Read the rest

Yeeeaaahhhhh not his call.

Anyone who has spent more than an hour in the company of gay men knows "babe" is our most overused word, not least to describe each other.

It's used as much as other people use "mate".

Anyone who thinks that's misogyny needs to find themselves some more gay friends! https://t.co/13ppVtqnWn

— Owen Jones (@OwenJones84) March 12, 2022

What gay men do amongst each other is wholly irrelevant to whether or not they get to call women they’re trying to bully on Twitter “babe”. If the woman you’re trying to bully says no, you don’t get to push back because gay men call each other it. Sexism is sexism even when gay men do it.… Read the rest