BBC yet again cheering on the destruction of women’s sports:

Two-time Olympic champion Caster Semenya says she is “not going to be ashamed” of being “different”, and will “fight for what is right” amid her ongoing dispute with athletics authorities.

Some lede. Should read: Two-time Olympic champion Caster Semenya, who competed against women, says he is “not going to be ashamed” of cheating women, and will continue to cheat amid his ongoing dispute with athletics authorities.

Semenya, 32, was born with differences of sexual development (DSD) and cannot compete in female track events without taking testosterone-reducing drugs.

What kind of differences of sexual development? Odd that the BBC doesn’t say. Why be so cryptic about it?

In a wide-ranging

JKR nails it again.

The Honourable Chris Kourakis has issued a statement referring to my 'anxiety' about the use of female pronouns for men standing trial for violence against women and rape. He states that 'a victim of crime would never be asked to address an accused person in a way which caused… pic.twitter.com/43tdCboOc6

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) November 6, 2023

The Honourable Chris Kourakis has issued a statement referring to my ‘anxiety’ about the use of female pronouns for men standing trial for violence against women and rape. He states that ‘a victim of crime would never be asked to address an accused person in a way which caused the victim distress.’

That assurance is welcome, although I note

Oh goody, an activist.

🚨 #SpeakerConfirmed!
Footballer & activist Natalie Washington @Transsomething will join us in Geneva on Dec 5 & 6 for the panel 'The transformative future of #womensports: embracing intersectionality & solidarity in policies & practices'

Click & Register for the #SCF2023! 👇

— Centre for Sport & Human Rights (@SportandRights) November 6, 2023

Erm. So that’s “The transformative future of #womensports” in the sense of being women’s sports played by men? That’s “embracing intersectionality and solidarity” in the sense of embracing men who invade women’s sports and thus destroy them for women?

Well why is there no solidarity with women? Can anyone explain?

Who is this Natalie Washington?

Natalie Washington is a British football

The Post on what Trump is planning for us:

Donald Trump and his allies have begun mapping out specific plans for using the federal government to punish critics and opponents should he win a second term, with the former president naming individuals he wants to investigate or prosecute and his associates drafting plans to potentially invoke the Insurrection Act on his first day in office to allow him to deploy the military against civil demonstrations.

In private, Trump has told advisers and friends in recent months that he wants the Justice Department to investigate onetime officials and allies who have become critical of his time in office, including his former chief of staff, John F. Kelly, and former attorney

The NY Times is live-reporting Trump’s testimony.

Trump’s acknowledgement of some involvement in assembling the documents in question can’t be stressed enough. The modus operandi of Trump and most around him is to lay the blame at staff’s feet, or consultants’ feet or lawyers’ feet.

Trump is being asked about why he decided to drop the value of Seven Springs, one of his properties in Westchester County, N.Y., on a financial statement. “I thought it was high,” Trump says, yet again admitting his involvement in the process.

Trump appears not to realize that, because here the value was lowered, these admissions of his involvement in manipulating the financial statements are damning.

But it was good manipulating. Surely he should … Read the rest

The protocol.

2/ This practice direction states *in terms* that the "use of preferred gender pronouns is a matter of respect". That is an ideological position and it is correct to criticise the policy as having that objective. Please note lawyers and *others* in the second sentence. pic.twitter.com/A0tC7FTdzj

— Dennis Noel Kavanagh (@Jebadoo2) November 6, 2023

The protocol “does no more than allow lawyers and others to inform the court of the correct pronunciation of their name and their preferred gender pronoun”

Stop right there.

That’s smuggling. That’s smuggling the concept of “preferred gender pronoun” concealed by “correct pronunciation of their name.” Those two items are not the same thing. Preferred is not the same as correct, and pronouns … Read the rest

Of course.

I would have linked straight to the source but you have to click through eleventy times to get to that set of nominations…but by having done so I did get to learn (to my complete lack of surprise) that 1. the male nominations appear first and 2. the male nominations are all men.

Yes, Yasmin Finney is a trans woman.… Read the rest

Ahh poor Fiona the lonely sheep stranded at the bottom of a cliff has been rescued at last.

The sheep, called Fiona and wearing a huge fleece, had been stranded at the foot of cliffs on the Cromarty Firth for at least two years, with an animal welfare charity having deemed rescue attempts “incredibly complex”.

But five farmers managed to haul her up a steep slope, and now plan to deliver her to a farm park.

A real farm park, not the pretend kind kids are told about when Flopsy dies in the night.

Jillian Turner first spotted the sheep two years ago while she was paddling along the coast of Sutherland with her kayak club. She assumed the

Science! Very sciencey science!

science pic.twitter.com/whcgYhgY4M

— Róisín Michaux (@RoisinMichaux) November 5, 2023

You just divide the Transgender Women’s Importance of Pronouns Scale by the Narcissism of Transgender Women’s Timewasting Scale and BOOM, there’s your total rock-solid non-falsifiable proof that Transgender Women’s Luxury Pronouns matter more than anything else in the entire universe. That’s SCIENCE.… Read the rest

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Mile-high semi-free press.

They were unfamiliar with the concept of people who had pursued so-called sex-change drugs and surgeries but later regretted these interventions and sought care to help remedy the results.

You’ve taken one side of an issue, but haven’t researched the issue enough to realize its full ramifications and fallout? You’ve been reassured by reliable sources that the other side is made up entirely of genocidal, Nazi bigots, so you don’t have to listen to what they’re saying at all. That’s a good look for journalists. I guess this sort of thing is bound to happen when you outsource your ethics, morality, and values to “reliable sources”. Like … Read the rest

Izzat right?

JK Rowling is basically David Duke, and that's been clear for a long time now.

But people still have to engage with her posts and point out she's a hateful bigot, over and over, because (a) beloved children's author, (b) no public consensus that trans hate is hate.

— Noah Berlatsky (@nberlat) November 4, 2023

What an idiot.… Read the rest

Yascha Mounk on Hamas and idenniny:

…the reaction to the worst murder of Jews since the end of the Second World War has continued to range from oddly muted to openly celebratory. Reacting to Hamas’s massacre in its immediate aftermath, Rivkah Brown, an editor at Novara Media, wrote that “today should be a day of celebration for supporters of democracy and human rights worldwide”. The Chicago chapter of Black Lives Matter sent out an invitation to a solidarity rally with Palestine that featured a picture of the Hamas fighters on paramotors who murdered over 250 people at a music festival.

During the following weeks, hundreds of prominent artists and writers, actors, academics and medical professionals, including Tilda Swinton and

Lisa Jones tells us about the Denver Press Club and its devotion to a free press:

On August 21, 2023, I was hunting for a small, private venue in downtown Denver for a mixer. The Denver Press Club building seemed to fit the bill. It could accommodate 50 to 100 guests, serve drinks and hors d’oeuvres, and was available for rental on the evening of Thursday, November 2nd.

On August 22nd, in an email exchange with the club’s executive director, I described the event I planned to host: an evening mixer where everyone is welcome to engage in honest and open discussion about free speech and gender identity. I said Nina Paley and Corinna Cohn, hosts of the Heterodorx

This week in Trump crime family news:

Trump’s elder sons, Donald Trump Jr and Eric Trump, took the witness stand in New York this week and testified they had little knowledge about the financial statements at the center of the case. Next week, Donald Trump is expected to take the stand on Monday, followed by daughter Ivanka Trump on Wednesday.

In the middle of a school week.

The New York attorney general’s office has been building its case that Trump, his adult sons and executives at the Trump Organization knowingly inflated the value of assets to boost the former president’s net worth when brokering deals. Judge Arthur Engoron ruled before the trial started that documents prove the family had

Originally a comment by Rev David Brindley on Bad Behaviour??? Us???

I can assure our US and UK readers that here in the Great Land of Downunder, cunt IS used as a term of endearment amongst some sub sets of men.

That sub set of men being the drunken uncles at parties, the misogynist and homophobic, sexually insecure males. Not only do they call each other “cunt”, but they also use other terms of endearment, such as “poof” to assure themselves that while their best friend may be gay, they most assuredly are straight. They refer to their wives/girlfriends as “The Missus” in fear that if they use her name she will either appear and drag them home, or at

Originally a comment by Papito on Transing sisterhood.

The manichaeism of oppressor vs. oppressed cannot be explained rationally. It is a form of religion. All that is good is on one side; all that is bad is on the other side, and we can always tell them apart. For folks who scream about the sex binary, they sure do like their binaries.

Was Adolf Hitler an oppressor or an oppressed?

When Adolf Hitler met with the Mufti Amin al-Husseini of Jerusalem and they made common cause to kill all the Jews in the Levant, was Hitler working in favor of the oppressor or the oppressed? How about the Mufti?

When al-Husseini accepted 750K DM a month for the purposes … Read the rest

The feminists that aren’t feminists:

Sisters Uncut — founded to campaign against cuts to domestic violence services — claims that the same “white supremacist patriarchy” oppressing feminists is “murdering Palestinians”.

It appeared to play down the massacre of 1,300 Israelis by Hamas terrorists on October 7, saying: “The violence of the oppressed must never be equated with that of the oppressor.”

And of course both come stamped with labels so that we can all know instantly which is which.

Explaining its alignment with the Palestinian cause, Sisters Uncut said: “As intersectional feminists we know our struggles are connected; nobody is free until we are all free. The same colonial logic of white supremacist patriarchy that oppresses feminists the world

Not putting up with the bullshit any more.

I can’t even imagine being compelled to do this. Sinister.

— JLahl or JMama (@JenniferLahl) November 3, 2023

They're going to need an awful lot of handcuffs!

— Rosie Duffield MP (@RosieDuffield1) November 3, 2023

… Read the rest

Princess Ivanka gets a lot of laughter for this joke:

Ivanka Trump asked a New York appeals court to pause the $250 million fraud trial of her family and its business empire as she appeals a judge’s order requiring her to testify in the case next week.

The request to stay the entire trial came at the tail end of a Thursday court filing arguing that Ivanka Trump will face “undue hardship” if forced to testify — in part because she is scheduled to appear “in the middle of a school week.”

Ah right, the middle of a school week, and how can she juggle that plus her 9 to 5 job plus cooking and cleaning and walking … Read the rest

Another law mandating lying in court:

South Australia is the latest state to endorse the use of preferred gender pronouns in the courtroom, saying it is a “matter of respect” to address parties by their chosen pronouns, and integral to “ensuring public confidence in the proper administration of justice”.

No it isn’t. Other way around. It’s a matter of respect not to lie, and not to order others to lie. People don’t get to “choose” what sex they are, and pronouns are simply grammatical indicators of what sex a third party is. (It didn’t have to be that way. In English first and second person pronouns don’t indicate sex, but third person singular ones do.)

SA follows the lead