Author: Ophelia Benson

No no no this is all wrong. TERF Times on Facebook:

The Labour Party is finally applying the Equality Act to its own internal processes after it prevented a man from applying to positions reserved for women.

This week, it emerged that Emily Brothers, a male former parliamentary candidate who identifies as a woman, had been barred from contesting women’s reserved seats in the Southern region’s National Policy Forum election.

Brothers was also excluded as a delegate from the main sessions of Labour’s women’s conference. He stood for Parliament in Sutton and Cheam in 2015, for the Greater London Assembly in 2016, and in Isle of Wight East at the last general election.

The decision has caused outrage among some Labour activists. Kerry Postlewhite, a newly elected member of the National Executive Committee, said:

“We object to this action and view Emily’s exclusion from NPF reserved seats for women as unfair and contrary to the values of our movement.

“This decision is needlessly disadvantaging Emily, who is already breaking down enough barriers. What is the purpose? Surely, a more inclusive culture is what party members deserve.”

No no no no no. Don’t be so silly. Of course “a more inclusive culture” in the sense of “including” men in the category women is not what anyone deserves, because it’s factually wrong (aka ludicrous) and because it’s grossly unfair.

Here’s the thing. (It’s so tedious to have to keep repeating this.) Not all “inclusion” is desirable or reasonable or fair. We don’t include everything with everything, because if we did there would just be a big lump of Everything, which would be useful to no one. We are allowed to separate one thing from another; that is not necessarily or inherently “exclusion” as in telling a small child she can’t come to the birthday party. We are allowed to separate the things.

Come on. You know this. When making a meal we don’t just include everything, job done. Quite the contrary. We exclude almost everything, so that what we do include will taste good and be healthy to eat. When getting dressed we’re not inclusive of every garment we have, because that would be lumpy and too hot. When going somewhere we’re not inclusive of everywhere, because we want to go to this one particular place, for reasons.

Are we getting the drift? Inclusion is a good thing in some contexts, yes, but not all of them. It’s not an uncomplicatedly friendly word. We do not have to be inclusive of everything every minute of every day. We are allowed to choose certain things and certain people. We don’t have to invite the whole neighborhood for lunch just because we’re eating a sandwich.

Women do not have to include men in the category “women”. Not ever. Kerry Postlewhite needs to get a grip on ontology.

Ah yes, this is a very good approach: accuse people of doing bad things then admit that you haven’t read the thing that inspired you to make the accusation. Just plain say that you’re guessing. Has Jonathan never heard about the stringency of UK libel law?

If the goal is to make Canadians hate us, he’s batting a thousand.

Canadians across the country are also going to increasing lengths to disentangle themselves from their southern neighbor, using their travel and shopping decisions to register their discontent with the Trump administration’s trade policies and aggressive rhetoric.

And by “aggressive rhetoric” they mean relentless stream of childish insults.

Their choices are a microcosm of the broader challenge facing Canada as it seeks to reduce its reliance on the U.S. after decades of relatively free trade that left the two economies intertwined. For these consumers, too, it’s not easy — and in some cases impossible — to quit America.

But the depth of the feelings here means some Canadians are willing to try. Trump has “kind of pushed every single button,” said Piché, 66. “I’ll buy Canadian first and anything but the U.S. second. Now the U.S. is a distant third.”

But on the plus side, Trump got to push those buttons he wanted to push. Happy Trump.

The rhetoric on both sides has ratcheted up in recent weeks. Trump has called Canada “nasty,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent likened the country to a “little yippy dog,” and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth posted a photo seemingly mocking the Canadian military. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, meanwhile, said his country had been “attacked.”

There’s a certain imbalance in the “rhetoric” here. The US contestants are childish and vulgar, while Carney just stated the obvious. It could be that the Post drew a veil over a stream of insults from Canada, or it could be that the stream just didn’t match the US one for sheer infantile tantrumming.

I forgot to share this part.

Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some are Donald Trump.

A bit of thoughtful reasonable dialogue with the public from the Trump administration:

That really is an official White House thing.

Always a good look to put a guy who thinks women have no rights in charge of human rights.

Breathtaking, isn’t it. Women want safety and this man calls them bigots for it – so Labour puts him on the human rights beat. Women not human then? Is that what Labour is saying?

She sure does look asexual, doesn’t she! More asexual than a nun, more asexual than a sweaty exhausted athlete, more asexual than a coal miner after a double shift.

The full asexual photo:

The NHS continues to be weird.

When Charlotte* discovered that a male colleague was using the women’s changing room at work, she raised the matter with her manager at the NHS. The colleague identified as a woman and had begun using a female name, but female staff had not been consulted about the effect on their changing arrangements.

“The matron spoke to HR and asked: ‘Where should this person change? They’re identifying as a woman.’ And HR said: ‘Well, they change wherever they want. If they want to use the female changing room, that’s what we need to let them do,’” she says.

Well, if people can change wherever they want, what even is a “female changing room”?

You can’t have both, you know. Logic forbids it. There are only two options: one changing room for each sex, for a total of two, or two changing rooms, both for both sexes.

Then came the Supreme Court ruling in April 2025 that the words “sex”, “woman” and “man” in the Equality Act 2010 refer strictly to biological sex. Charlotte’s NHS trust withdrew its gender identification policy immediately. But it was only this August, 16 months later, that staff were finally instructed to use changing rooms corresponding to their biological sex or the available unisex facilities.

16 months later…”Oh by the way, we forgot to tell you, the rules have changed.”

It’s especially ridiculous because it’s the NHS. They know from bodies. They know the differences. They’re not engineers or lawyers, they’re nurses and doctors. Bodies are their job.

It is a problem across the NHS. Despite last year’s Supreme Court ruling and the recently published EHRC Code of Practice, many NHS organisations have yet to produce clear, up-to-date policies.

The Telegraph has reviewed Freedom of Information responses from eight English ambulance trusts. None disclosed a policy clearly stating that women’s staff toilets, showers and changing rooms were reserved for biological women. Some retained policies permitting access according to “affirmed” or “social” gender, while others were reviewing or replacing their guidance. Several also supplied policies warning that repeated or deliberate “misgendering” could lead to formal action.

It’s so wearisome. If the medical profession can’t get it right who can? What is so difficult about this?

While changing rooms have become the most visible battleground in the conflict over sex and gender, they are just one symptom of a much deeper problem – an enduring NHS workplace culture in which challenging gender self-identification can still carry serious professional and social consequences, whatever the law says.

Apart from Hutchison, every NHS employee interviewed for this article has asked for anonymity, fearing complaints, investigations or damage to their careers. That alone is telling.

Yes it is, especially because [see above] this is medical care we’re talking about. It’s not religious institutions, it’s not academia, it’s not the arts, it’s not architecture. It’s bodies. It’s of the earth earthy. If medical professionals are willing to pretend not to know which bodies are which, how can anyone trust them to tell the truth about anything? Or even bandage a small wound?

Spot the problem.

When Charlotte* discovered that a male colleague was using the women’s changing room at work, she raised the matter with her manager at the NHS. The colleague identified as a woman and had begun using a female name, but female staff had not been consulted about the effect on their changing arrangements.

“The matron spoke to HR and asked: ‘Where should this person change? They’re identifying as a woman.’ And HR said: ‘Well, they change wherever they want. If they want to use the female changing room, that’s what we need to let them do,’” she says.

See it?

If this man uses the female changing room (because “we need” to let them) then the females who used the female changing room are prevented from changing where they want to.

Why does this one man get to change in the female changing room because he wants to, at the expense of women who want to change in their changing room?

Why do all the women have to lose so that one man can win?

Why does that strike anyone as a solution? Why isn’t the problem, and the disproportion, screamingly obvious?

I don’t think I will ever understand how people manage to see this as reasonable and fair and not at all grotesque.

Samantha Niblett MP thinks it’s bad to know what a woman is.

That’s a tad disturbing.

How dare women know what a woman is? The impudence is shocking.

Women who know what women are are stuck in their ways. Good, unstuck, civil women like Samantha Niblett know that some men are women and some women are men: that’s the only right way to understand the matter. Thank you for keeping it so very civil.

When people with important human rights roles have nothing but contempt for the rights of women.

Easy for him to say.

We’re doing this again.

Patagonia, the outdoor clothing and gear company, has joined a lawsuit challenging Donald Trump’s decision to significantly reduce the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in Utah, removing protections from nearly 3m acres.

In July, the president approved the reduction of the sites by 90%, clearing the way to open the land to oil and gas companies. He argued in his proclamations that doing so would allow lands to be “put to a higher-priority use” and that they contained critical minerals important to “resource independence …[and] national security”.

Trump previously targeted the monuments, which are sacred to tribes, in his first term. Joe Biden ultimately overturned it.

When in doubt, destroy and use up irreplaceable things. Always choose destruction.

The Natural Resources Defense Council, which filed the federal lawsuit on Wednesday along with several other conservation groups, described Trump’s proclamations as “one of the largest rollbacks of public land protections in US history”.

“These monuments protect places that took millions of years to form. President Trump is trying to destroy them with a stroke of a pen. That cannot stand,” said Christy Goldfuss, the NRDC executive director.

“Once you open these lands to mining and drilling, what gets lost is not coming back – ancient cliff dwellings, dinosaur fossils found nowhere else on Earth and sacred sites tied to the tribal nations.”

Do not destroy the dinosaur fossils! I’m serious.

The other groups that challenged Trump’s rollback in court include the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance and Earthjustice, which represents Grand Canyon Trust, WildEarth Guardians, the Sierra Club, Western Watersheds Project, the Center for Biological Diversity, Great Old Broads for Wilderness and the National Parks Conservation Association.

Great Old Broads?! Sign me up!

That morning.

Samantha Niblett has always been a trans ally? So, for 46 years? That’s fascinating because how many people even knew trans people existed 46 years ago? Especially in infancy?

Wellll by “always” she meant…um…a long time. Quite a long time. The exact length of the time is a question for the experts.

It’s a weird thing to believe, you know. Goes against our most basic knowledge. I think awareness of the difference starts in infancy. It’s quite possible that it starts in utero. Haven’t there been experiments to test that? Whether infants can tell the difference, and it turns out that they certainly can? I think there have.

Funny, just a week ago she said

Why yes, we do, and some of those bodies are female, while others are male.

I’ve run out of time for the moment so I’ll just leave you with this little gem.

It’s Celebrate a Feminist by Calling Her ‘They’ Day!

But wait.

“…if a woman needing help was wearing a burqa came into your surgery asking for help…”

But women don’t wear burqas because women, women wear burqas because men. Ultimately it’s because babies and paternity and all that. Men police women between the legs because men don’t want to waste their resources on some other man’s sprog. The burqa is to hide the slut from men.

Dirty.

Trump may have committed “serious” ethical violations by giving three officials including his close personal aide Natalie Harp cash gifts of $45,000 each, according to a former White House “ethics czar”, as a watchdog group called for an investigation.

The nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center filed a complaint with the US Office of Government Ethics over the US president’s handouts to a handful of staff, arguing that an investigation is “clearly warranted”.

Norm Eisen, who was a special counsel to Barack Obama for ethics and government reform, said the payments were a possible breach of regulation 18 USC 209, a federal conflict of interest statute that prohibits the US government’s executive branch employees from receiving payment beyond their salary for performing their official duties.

Possible breach? Looks like an obvious breach.

The White House has denied that they represent a breach of ethical codes.

But Eisen said the denials strained credibility. “It appears to raise the most serious issues under 18 USC 209, which prohibits supplementation of income,” he said. “The White House denies that these payments represent income supplementation but that is hard to believe under the circumstances.”

How is 45k added to your salary not income supplementation? It ain’t income diminution, now is it.

Reem Alsalem responds.

Both disgusting and dishonest.

He can’t, and he wouldn’t if he could.

Plus you’re not allowed to buy votes. No, really, you’re not.