Well I’ll be damned. The BBC has managed to report on the window-smashing at the Filia conference without blaming or insulting or ignoring the women.

The title, in particular, took my breath away. Have the scales fallen from their eyes at last??

Trans activists vandalise feminist conference

Golly. Not terf conference, not evil bitches conference, not Rowling-approved conference, but feminist conference. Not activists but trans activists. Not protest or confront or reject but vandalise. No soft-soaping at all.

Police have launched an investigation after a venue in Brighton was vandalised ahead of a women’s rights conference.

Trans activists claimed responsibility for the incident at the Brighton Centre on Kings Road in the early hours of Friday. Masked figures were seen in online videos smashing windows and spray-painting the building, ahead of a three-day event billed as one of the largest grassroots feminist gatherings in Europe.

Note the absence of any insinuation that the women’s rights conference had no business being there. Note the lack of hints that feminists are evil if they focus on women rather than trans women. Note the second appearance of the word “feminist” without any surrounding insults or provisos.

The group said it carried out the vandalism because the conference was hosting “some of the most vicious transphobia in pop politics”, and warned of further action.

Previous guests at the charity’s conference have included JK Rowling, who has been called transphobic for her views on gender identity and allowing trans women into women-only spaces. The author retweeted a post on X which criticised the vandalism.

That’s the closest they get to re-assigning the crime, and it’s not very close.

Event organisers FiLiA said: “It is shocking and saddening that a conference for women to discuss domestic abuse, sexual violence and lesbian safety has been met with smashed windows, graffiti and intimidation.”

FiLiA CEO Lisa-Marie Taylor added that the charity “campaigns for a world free from patriarchy where all women and girls are liberated. The activities of a small, violent minority will not diminish the spirit of sisterhood and solidarity which FiLiA embodies,” she said.

The BBC neglects to add anything to undermine or sneer at those statements.

I’m stunned. I wonder if it will last. I wonder if someone has put a foot down.

H/t Acolyte of Sagan