Author: Ophelia Benson

Trump is having the government give him a massive load of cash because there’s nothing corrupt about that no sireeeee.

Trump, his two eldest sons and the Trump Organization dropped their $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service on Monday in exchange for the Department of Justice creating a $1.776 billion fund to settle claims by people who allege they are victims of so-called lawfare.

Can you say extortion? I know I certainly can.

A Miami federal court filing by Trump’s lawyers dropping the lawsuit suggested it effectively barred a judge from analyzing whether the president’s civil suit was legally valid and from dismissing it if she found it was invalid.

I don’t know what that means. Is it up to Trump’s lawyers whether or not dropping the lawsuit bars a judge from whatever? Can’t the judge just say no it doesn’t and get on with her job?

The move came days after ABC News reported the DOJ was negotiating the settlement, which was blasted by Democratic members of Congress who called the then-expected deal a “slush fund” for allies of Trump who had been prosecuted under the Biden administration.

That’s certainly what it sounds like from here.

A spokesman for Trump’s legal team, in a statement, said, “President Trump, his family, supporters, and countless other America First Patriots were illegally targeted by the Democrat-lead law enforcement agencies, including the Department of Justice, and the IRS.”

“The IRS wrongly allowed a rogue, politically-motivated actor to unlawfully leak private and confidential information about President Trump, his family, and the Trump Organization to left-wing news outlets such the New York Times and ProPublica, which was then illegally released to millions of people,” the spokesman said. “Similarly, President Trump was also the victim of illegal harassment and invasions of privacy as part of the politically motivated and completely discredited Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax, and the wrongful, election interfering raid of his home at Mar-a-Lago, in Palm Beach, Florida.”

Oh very professional. Echo Trump’s childish wording and then fail to mention the fact that he kept cartons of top secret documents that he had zero legal right to have at his “home at Mar-a-Lago”.

The advocacy group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington blasted the settlement, calling it “one of the single most corrupt acts in American history.”  

“While Americans are struggling with an affordability crisis, President Trump plans to use nearly $1.8 billion in taxpayer money to pay off his friends and allies – including potentially the violent insurrectionists who attacked the Capitol on January 6th,” said CREW President Donald Sherman in a statement.

“By settling his absurd $10 billion lawsuit against his own administration, Trump and the Justice Department just engaged in the most brazen act of self-dealing in the history of the presidency, and did so quickly in order to avoid the scrutiny of the judicial process, while quite likely violating the Constitution’s Domestic Emoluments Clause in the process,” Sherman said.

Just one more reason to wish Trump had fallen off a cliff at age 13.

That thing where you say you want to make something clear and immediately proceed to make it as unclear as it could possibly be.

I want to make something clear following recent public coverage relating to someone I was previously professionally connected with online.

I’m deliberately not naming the individual because I do not wish to direct additional traffic towards their platforms or content.

I appeared as a guest on a podcast hosted by that person. Since then, views and commentary have been publicly expressed which I find deeply harmful and fundamentally opposed to what I stand for, both personally and professionally. Over time I repeatedly raised concerns directly, but those conversations ultimately went nowhere.

Wut?

If that’s making something clear, what would making it murky look like?

In light of recent developments I wanted to make my position absolutely clear. I do not endorse or align myself with the views now publicly associated with that platform or the individual behind it.

I won’t be getting into public debate and request that you don’t discuss any individuals in the comments of this post. I know this situation may feel upsetting or difficult for some people and if you want to speak to me directly, you’re welcome to DM me.

If she really wanted to make her position absolutely clear, she must be confused about the meaning of the word “clear”.

He won’t stand for it, I tell you.

Holyrood’s newly elected presiding officer will crack down on MSPs who misgender their new trans and non-binary colleagues.

In an interview with The Times, Kenny Gibson, who opposed Nicola Sturgeon’s gender reform legislation in 2022, said he would take incidents as they come.

But he made it clear that he would not tolerate politicians deliberately or maliciously refusing to use the chosen pronouns of the newly elected Green MSPs Iris Duane and Q Manivannan.

But why?

There’s no such thing as “chosen pronouns”. That’s not how it works. We don’t get to make tiresome rules about language that require other people to call us something Special and Fictitious. Very young children can do that, but nobody else can. Pronouns exist to save trouble, not to generate more trouble. It’s a nuisance for all parties to repeat someone’s name with every mention, so we have generic pronouns that save us that labor. Trying to force us to use special luxury ones for just this one special person creates more labor, and anxious labor at that. The anxiety part is revealed by this silly promise to rebuke or punish legislators who get it “wrong”.

Luxury pronouns are the kind of thing you expect from kids in first grade. They are not the kind of thing you expect from grown-ass adults legislating for a nation.

“You have to respect what that person wants to be called,” Gibson said. “And if someone doesn’t do that, then you have to call that out in the chamber and you have to take the appropriate action.”

No you don’t. No you don’t. No you don’t. That’s a ridiculous claim. What if that person wants to be called King Charles, or Keir Starmer, or JK Rowling, or Peter Tatchell? What if that person wants to be called Xmfzlxnx? How about BigTits or ThrobbingCock or RapeyMcRaperson?

No, you don’t necessarily have to respect what that person wants to be called, because there are infinite possibilities of grotesquerie like the above. This fact should make the absurdity of the claim obvious, but of course it won’t.

Nevertheless it is grotesque for adults to demand to be referred to as “she” when they’re men or “he” when they’re women. It’s a toddler game transported to a national legislature. It’s about as grotesque as grotesqueries can get.

“If there’s a clear issue of it looks like it’s being deliberate, then you have to act on that because you can’t have someone, a member of the parliament, feeling undervalued or disrespected.”

What about the women who are members of that parliament who feel undervalued and disrespected by men who insist on being referred to as “she”?

“So whatever your personal views are of what they call themselves, it is what they want to call themselves, I think, which is significant.” 

Oh yeah? What if they all want to be called Kenny Gibson? Eh? What if even one of them wants that?

A Scottish Greens spokesman said: “If any members were to be misgendered in the chamber we would expect the presiding officer, alongside other parliamentary authorities, to ensure MSPs feel safe, secure and respected in the environment they work in.”

At the expense of everyone else, and especially of the female part of everyone else.

The new presiding officer said he was not expecting trouble in the new parliament with an influx of new members, a new party in Reform and a bigger Green group, but added: “If there’s trouble, it will be dealt with.”

Gibson said: “I was shown a magic button actually yesterday where I can immediately cut it off, if necessary. I don’t expect to have to do that.”

Great. So the MSPs have a choice between lying and being silenced. Brilliant.

From Out magazine:

Trans athlete forced to share 1st place with cisgender girls at track meet

Note both the deception and the discrepancy. They (the enemies) are called cisgender girls while he is called trans athlete. Listen, Out, when you’re avoiding spelling out the realities, that tells us you know they make you look like bullying shits. You are bullying shits. A rude bullying boy stole first place from two girls, and here you are trying to hide the stark facts behind the usual obfuscating verbiage.

California’s two-time state champion AB Hernandez dominated her latest division track meet this past weekend, and despite protests and controversial policies, she aims to close out her high school athletics career with a third state championship title.

Despite protests from people who think boys should not compete in girls’ track meets, he aims to keep competing in girls’ track meets, because he’s a greedy ruthless young shit.

She jumped higher than any other girl and took first place in three track and field contests. But a state athletic policy enacted last year forced transgender athlete AB Hernandez to share the podium on Saturday with cisgender girls who couldn’t match her performance.

No, the policy forced the girls to share the podium with a boy who ran in the girls’ race. It’s grossly unfair.

The 17-year-old was apparently warming up for her next event when the long jump medal ceremony took place, so Moorpark High School’s Gianna Gonzalez stood alone on the first-place podium, despite finishing more than a foot behind Hernandez, Fox News reported. 

Yes, because Hernandez is a boy, and it was the girls’ long jump ceremony, so he shouldn’t have been on the podium at all.

The author of this lying drivel is Dawn Ennis, whose real name is Don.

Jeez, where is everybody? Not a peep in 8 hours; do you all have the flu?

Excuse me?

The Justice Department on Monday announced the creation of a $1.776 billion fund to compensate President Donald Trump’s allies who claim they were unfairly targeted by the previous administration.

“The creation” forsooth – you mean they’re stealing our money to give it to their crooked buddies. I can’t wait to hear about the nine hundred billion fund to compensate Trump for [insert outrage here].

It’s an unprecedented move that would allow the president’s administration to pay his supporters from a government agency he controls with taxpayer money.

An unprecedented move aka a colossal theft in broad daylight.

The so-called “anti-weaponization” fund, with its symbolic 1776 figure, is likely to face immediate challenges in court from Democrats and watchdog organizations who say the effort amounts to corruption by allowing the president to enrich allies over what critics they say are unfounded claims of political prosecutions by the Biden administration.

Gosh ya think? It could hardly be more obviously corruption if it painted CORRUPTION on the roof and front door.

New health boffin doesn’t know what a woman is.

The new Health Secretary has claimed that the definition of a woman is up for “debate” after arguing that trans women are women.

James Murray, a Starmerite minister chosen to replace Wes Streeting, previously said he defined women as “adult female and trans women”.

Adult human female and men.

Maybe he should be moved from Health to something less…physical?

He said it was very important to have “this debate” in an unearthed interview in which he defended a transgender swimmer competing against female athletes.

So in other words he’s yet another man who does not give a flying fuck about women and our rights. Good to know.

Stuart Andrew, the shadow health secretary, told The Telegraph: “It is striking that the Health Secretary responsible for women’s healthcare appears unable to answer a basic question about biological sex.

“His role oversees maternity services, breast cancer screening, female hospital wards and the rules on single-sex spaces for patients and staff.

“These are serious issues that shape care and safeguarding across the NHS. Following the Supreme Court judgment, clarity on biological sex is not optional. The Health Secretary should be able to define a woman without implying it is up for debate.”

I hate it when the Tories are right and Labour is contemptibly wrong. I hate having my nose constantly shoved in the fact that men on the left will destroy women’s rights with a cheery grin on their faces.

A source close to the Health Secretary said on Friday evening: “These comments were from four years ago. It’s safe to say James’s position has evolved since that interview.

“He really welcomed the Supreme Court ruling which made the law clear in this area and looks forward to upholding the new guidance that will be published on single-sex spaces”.

But four years ago he thought some men were women. That should be a disqualifier.

Another credulous fool steps up.

The incoming boss of the UK’s biggest trade union has claimed she would not be comfortable representing someone like Sandie Peggie.

What is “someone like Sandie Peggie”? A woman who is a hospital nurse who doesn’t want to have to change her clothes with a man in the changing room. The top union boss would feel oooky having to represent her. Have we reached peak disgusting yet?

Andrea Egan, who will take charge of Unison on January 22, asked “what were the real issues” in a high-profile employment tribunal brought by the nurse against NHS Fife.

…

Asked how she would react if a similar case came to Unison, Egan told Politics Home: “I haven’t followed that case.

“But what were the real issues within that? I have trans friends, trans women friends; my nephew is a trans man. I wouldn’t have an issue. I’d want to understand. Because the argument can then develop to anybody saying… ‘Well, I don’t want you there because you’ve got blonde hair’ or ‘I don’t want them there because they’ve got blue eyes’,” Egan says.

Really? So then all public toilets should be for both sexes?

The union chief’s comments were questioned by Scottish Labour MP Joani Reid.

“I’m concerned by these comments from Ms Egan,” she said. “They suggest a fundamental misunderstanding of the law and a troubling lack of regard for women’s safety.

“Trade unions have a long and proud history of standing up for women at work and in society more broadly and that principle should be upheld without equivocation.”

Damn right they should.

Trump is still bullying Greenland.

But for the past four months, negotiators from the United States, Greenland and Denmark, which controls Greenland’s foreign affairs, have been holding confidential talks in Washington about Greenland’s future.

The talks were meant to give Mr. Trump an offramp to his threats of a military takeover of Greenland and to scale back a crisis that risked breaking apart the NATO alliance. But Greenlandic leaders are worried about what is being proposed, which is a much larger U.S. role on the Arctic island. And they fear that if the conflict with Iran winds down, the president will swing his aggression back on them.

Does giving Trump an offramp ever work? He’s not an offramp kind of guy. He’s a bull-headed kind of guy who wants to do whatever he wants to do, and does not listen to warnings or refusals or anything else that’s not instant submission.

The United States is trying to modify a longstanding military arrangement to ensure American troops can stay in Greenland indefinitely, even if Greenland becomes independent. The notion is basically a forever clause, and Greenlanders do not like it.

Who would like it? It’s basically an invasion.

The United States has pushed the talks beyond military matters and wants effective veto power over any major investment deals in Greenland to box out competitors like Russia and China. Greenlanders and Danes strongly object to this.

Of course they do. They don’t consider Donald Trump their boss.

The American demands are so steep, Greenlandic officials fear, that they amount to a major imposition on their sovereignty. Despite all of the talk from Danish and American officials that Greenland’s future is up to the island’s 57,000 people, Greenlandic officials said the American demands would tie their hands for generations.

If the Americans get everything they want, said Justus Hansen, a member of Greenland’s Parliament, there will never be any “real independence.”

“We might as well raise our own flag halfway,” he said.

How about lowering Trump’s pants halfway.

Trump two weeks ago:

Trump has recorded himself reading scripture from the Old Testament for a marathon Bible reading billed as “a national reading of God’s law.”

Fresh off a public tirade against the Pope and backlash over an AI-generated image portraying himself as Jesus Christ, the 79-year-old president prepared a two-and-a-half-minute reading calling for repentance from God’s people for an event at the Museum of the Bible.

The White House has called the reading an event to “honor Holy Scripture, renew our faith, usher in a historic resurgence of religion on American shores, and rededicate the United States as one Nation under God.”

Trump’s passage comes from the Old Testament book of II Chronicles, which has become one of the Christian right’s favorite passages.

“If My people, which are called by My name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land,” Trump’s passage reads.

Trump yesterday:

Trump sent in a pre-recorded video for the Rededicate 250 blasphemy fest instead of speaking in person, and he still could barely read it cogently

(also, note him covering up the disfigured back of his right hand) pic.twitter.com/yhf7Gc3WEc

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 17, 2026

Pre-reccorded and pre-released – it’s the same clip.

Trump couldn't even be bothered to send a new message to his own administration's National Jubilee of Prayer, Praise & Thanksgiving event. Instead, they just recycled the video of him reading 2 Chronicles 7:11–22 from the America Reads the Bible event a few weeks ago. https://t.co/bDg1R0E7Aq pic.twitter.com/UHIADc7HPp

— Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) May 17, 2026

They just recycled the video without, apparently, saying it was recycled.

Time for some heavy-duty smiting!

From the long Unherd article about the BBC’s love affair with trans ideology:

In January 2017, the BBC led the news with the commutation by President Barack Obama of the WikiLeaks source Bradley Manning. Cath Leng was a chief writer for the channel, and she was struggling with Manning’s pronouns; Manning now identified as a woman called Chelsea and the BBC scripts, as per the Style Guide, referred to Manning as she/her throughout. Leng’s position required a commitment to accuracy and impartiality and as she remembers: “It was my job to make sure everything was true. I said, ‘You have to give me reasons why I should lie about this person’s sex. Really good reasons.’”

So Leng set to work on the pronouns, changing them from “she” to “he” to the outrage of some of her colleagues. Reaching an impasse, the subject was taken to the “huddle” of news editors in charge that day. Leng was overruled; from then on, for her, everything changed. “I was ostracized,” she remembers. There were some staffers who were sympathetic but they weren’t willing to back her up publicly. She was up against a generation of younger staff who were suspicious of anyone who questioned the right to self-identify, and who were backed up by the Style Guide. “It was a war of attrition.” she says. “They wear you down.”

Sounds exactly like Freethought Blogs back then – although my blowup there was in 2015, so two years before Cath Leng’s. Anyway: I know the feeling.

Leng argues forcefully that she is neither a bigot nor a transphobe; her objection is based on what she considered to be the principal duty of a journalist: to tell the truth. Her refusal to back down was rewarded with disciplinary action. Ultimately, she won, but left the BBC in 2023, effectively forced out after 25 years, she believes, because of her views.

Leng’s objection — the sacrifice of truth — is a powerful one. As one long-serving presenter put it to me: “It’s the only area of our professional life where we’re told you have to say things that aren’t true.”

And if the profession at issue is journalism, there should be no such area. Not one.

In October 2017, the then-prime minister, Theresa May, put transgender issues on the political agenda by announcing at a PinkNews Awards that she wanted to “demedicalize” the process of applying for a Gender Recognition Certificate: by scrapping the requirement for a diagnosis of gender dysphoria. This was “Self-ID”.

On the night May announced her plans, a self-identified transgender woman using the name Karen White — real name Stephen Wood — was spending another night in New Hall women’s prison in Yorkshire, where he’d been sent because he identified as a woman. He had already carried out a series of sexual assaults against female prisoners, but remained there while the offenses were investigated. The following year, Wood was sentenced to life in prison for a catalog of violent sexual offenses.

This was exactly the danger women concerned about allowing biological men into women’s spaces had highlighted. They weren’t suggesting that transgender women were more likely to offend, but opposed making it easier for men to declare themselves women because it risked making access to victims — whether in prisons, women’s refuges or changing-rooms — easier for offenders like Wood. 

How ridiculous that there has to be any cautious whimpering about not suggesting that transgender women were more likely to offend, because of course they fucking are. Are men more likely to rape women than women are? Why yes, Doctor Peabody, men are more like to rape women than women are. As any fule kno.

Originally a comment by Artymorty on “Discrimination” is not always a pejorative.

It is a difficult question. I thought about this a lot in the New Atheism days, with respect to Islam. I see the issue as a conflation of actions and “identities”. Actions can have moral consequences. I think it’s trickier with respect to mere identities. Doing bad and identifying as a part of a group that advocates bad aren’t the same thing. But there’s a gray area. It’s at least circumstantial evidence, if not quite enough to convict, so to speak.

I think there are some parallels between Islam and trans here.

Regarding Islam:

On the one hand, the teachings within Islam are deeply misogynistic and homophobic. And many, many people who hold onto Muslim identities believe that they’re entitled to discriminate against women and gays because they “are” Muslim. So it’s at the very least a red flag when you meet someone who identifies as Muslim, with respect to their stance on women and gays, because there’s homophobia and misogyny baked right into the group’s “rules”.

On the other hand, identities are sticky things; people hold onto them for various reasons. Some people still identify as Muslim even though they reject the misogynistic and homophobic tenets of the religion. I wouldn’t want to see those people discriminated against simply because they still “are” Muslim. Maajid Nawaz is an example of a liberal reformist who still identifies as Muslim.

So it’s not quite a “hard” bias, but a “soft” one: I don’t completely write people off on-sight when I learn that they’re Muslim, but there’s valid reason to hesitate.

But then, Muslims themselves whose actions are misogynistic and homophobic often cry foul that they’re being discriminated against simply for “being” Muslim. Like the conservative Muslim activists who sought to destroy Maajid Nawaz by painting him as an anti-Muslim bigot for his liberal stance. Counterintuitively, they want a “hard”, morally-binding connection between simply having a Muslim identity and siding with misogyny and homophobia.

Here’s the trans parallel:

India Willoughby’s actions are what made him toxic. He believes he was entitled to take those actions because of the “identity” he feels he has. He believes there’s a hard moral link between “being” trans and taking actions which, from a secular lens, are plainly bigoted.

“Being trans”, to Willoughby, means being entitled to say and do a whole lot of terrible things.

Obviously, a lot of other people who hold onto trans “identities” believe the same thing, because it’s very much a part of that identity group’s current cultural ethos. We’re trans because we were born this way; it’s our mission to prove to the world that biological sex is either fictional or irrelevant; anyone who disagrees is Public Enemy Number One, and must be destroyed by any means necessary before they destroy us…

But not everyone who has a trans identity necessarily believes those things or acts on them. For example, there are people who identify as transgender because they underwent (or were subjected to, as minors) cosmetic appearance-modifying procedures, but who no longer believe that they’ve literally changed biological sex, and who may even be allies with gender-criticals.

So I’d stop short of “hard” discriminating against anyone simply for having a trans identity. But it’s certainly a red flag in the same way that having a Muslim identity is a red flag: it’s a group that has discrimination against others baked right into it. Yet, at the same time, affiliation with that group doesn’t quite come with the guarantee that one will act on its tenets.

It’s because identities are sticky and irrational, not easy to uncouple ourselves from, that I don’t think there’s a moral justification for outright discriminating against people — say, explicitly rejecting someone’s job application because of their identity — even if that group has some ugly beliefs at its core. Some people are outliers within their identity groups, “stuck” in them even though they aren’t entirely aligned with their core tenets.

(Well, there’s a caveat here: it should be at least reasonably possible to “be” an X without signing up for bad things. Some identites really have no room for outliers, and are therefore, as far as I’m concerned, hard-wired to moral judgment. Nazis, for example: it’s not reasonably possible for anyone to identify as a Nazi today without being deeply racist and antisemitic. That’s a hard link, not a soft implication.)

And I think most people agree: I don’t think anyone’s outright discriminated against Willoughby because he’s trans, but I do think that having a trans identity is now a giant red flag, and there’s going to be some “soft” discrimination on the basis of it. It’s certainly going to cause quiet hesitation among the hiring committees.

And that’s just the way it is.

Ultimately, these things are commensurate: the degree of trans culture’s affiliation to misogyny and homophobia is equal to the degree that its group members are going to be implicated in the moral consequences of misogyny and homophobia. I wouldn’t call “being trans” a smoking gun, but it’s still fit for the jury.

Tough luck, Willoughby.

Originally a comment by Arcadia on He calls himself “Roxanne”

There are portions of the judgement that suggest the judges felt their hands were tied by the law as it is presently written, and that the only remedy will be changing the law.

The law could be changed as soon as the next sitting week, but that’s mere theory, and unlikely to happen with our parliament as it is constituted now, and with our media as it is now.

The main opposition party, the Liberal Party (I am sorry to be so confusing for you northern hemisphere types who think of “liberal” as meaning left of centre, but Australia’s Liberal Party is of the Right) has made an announcement saying that if they were to be elected next election, they would fix this. However, it is highly unlikely they will be elected next election, and Hansard shows that the original Gillard government amendments that are the present source of all this difficulty were passed on a bipartisan basis. So we’d still be relying on a party that passed this nonsense to undo it, and most have demonstrated when questioned that they don’t understand it.

Further, if the Liberal Party were the heroes here, they’re not doing what’s required in the States they govern now: Tasmania, Queensland and the Northern Territory. Some good things have been done in Queensland on “gender affirming care”, and in Northern Territory to get men out of women’s prisons, but that’s it. No reversals of Self ID, or even attempts at it, and no clear announcements that it’s perfectly okay, desirable and normal to have and fund female spaces and programs, or LGB spaces and programs.

To say I’m skeptical that the Liberals will fix this is an understatement.

Choir members sue charity – always a nice beginning to a headline.

Choristers who were dropped from the London Marathon in a transgender row are taking legal action over “discrimination”.

The Singing Striders, a choir that is often booked to stand on the sidelines of races and raise the spirits of runners, had been invited to attend the 2026 marathon by Scope, a leading disability charity.

The ensemble was subsequently dropped days before the event because Janet Murray, its founder, had been publicly critical of transgender ideology.

Let’s do that with everything. Do some digging, find a random incident that you consider Not Quite the Thing, and get the perps banned or blocked or boycotted or any other version of “ostracized” you can think of. Hours of fun for the whole family! And so social justicey!

Scope decided that her comments went against its “commitment to diversity and inclusion”, and told Ms Murray that the charity was “concerned about your views because we don’t agree with your views”.

Well quite. I mean really. How dare people have views that we don’t agree with? What is the world coming to? Would it not perhaps be best to cancel everyone right now just to be on the safe side?

The choir founder told The Telegraph: “I believe Scope unlawfully discriminated against me because of my lawfully held gender-critical beliefs.

“It raises much wider questions about whether women who state basic biological realities, or advocate for female-only spaces and sport, are increasingly being treated as unacceptable by organisations that claim to value equality and inclusion.”

We know all too well they are.

Ms Murray, a writer and journalist, has expressed concerns about the inclusion of biological males in women’s sports and organisations such as Girlguiding.

Her gender-critical views were the subject of two anonymous complaints to Scope, which then informed Ms Murray that she would not be welcome to sing at the charity’s allotted “cheer zone” spot along the London Marathon route.

Because what? People in the area would know about these gender-critical views? Of course they wouldn’t. The point isn’t that Murray and/or her choir are somehow a toxin for people in the vicinity; the point is to show off. “Look at us insulting yet another women’s group because we are so enlightened!!! Be very impressed!!!!”

The Singing Striders have performed for Scope at past marathons without incident. However, Scope defended its decision on the grounds that it is “committed to the equality and inclusion of trans and non-binary disabled people”.

Shit job of defending. Complete absence of connection between the equality blah blah blah and kicking out a choir because its founder knows that men are not women.

After an outcry over the decision, the charity reinvited the Singing Striders to the marathon, but the offer was declined.

Lawyers acting for Ms Murray and the three other singers claim that actions taken against the group discriminated against Ms Murray’s belief in the immutability of biological sex.

Oh dear, there’s an outcry; we’re sorry we insulted you and excluded you, please come back.

No, fuckers, we’re suing your asses.

Nail them.

This raises a difficult question.

No, no, no. You lost your career because you’re a toxic, hate filled liability. You repulsed then insulted every potential employer. You are the architect of your own downfall, mate. Own it. pic.twitter.com/akoTSqy9XD

— Stuart Macintosh (@stueymaco) May 17, 2026

What if someone is fired for “being trans” – is that an injustice?

What does it mean to “be trans”?

It means either believing you are the sex you are not, or claiming to believe you are the sex you are not.

That’s a problem.

For most kinds of jobs, employers don’t seek out either delusional people or systematically dishonest people. For many kinds of jobs, both lying and extreme confusion about reality are disqualifiers. Many kinds of jobs rely on people who don’t live in a fantasy world and don’t tell lies.

The whole point of “trans” is that it is in fact based on an extreme and grotesque lie about human beings, and that its advocates absolutely, ardently, determinedly repeat that lie and try to force everyone else to repeat it too.

It’s a horrible mix, delusion and lying, and it’s absolute poison for most kinds of work. Willoughby himself is quite a good advertisement of that.

More from that Telegraph article.

I stopped at:

“Nobody, ever, ever said to me as director of news, ‘you need to get points in the Stonewall league table’,” she said. But she acknowledged that “there was a sea in which we all swam… an atmosphere. We need to be kind to transitioning people. It’s a social phenomenon. And I think this ‘be kind’ thing was at the heart of it.”

Onward.

Ms Unsworth claimed that one reason why the trans issue “wasn’t gripped” during her time at the helm of BBC News was that the core facts of the issue were themselves disputed.

She claimed: “Impartiality only operates when you can look at evidence and facts and point to them as the basis of your reporting on this. And the facts at this point were incredibly disputed.”

Disputed by fools.

Come on. No one with the brains of a gnat really thinks the fact that men are not women is “incredibly disputed” in the sense that serious people are seriously disputing that men are not women. It’s not a genuine controversy, it’s an invented one that’s been puffed up by zealots.

Ms Unsworth added that the turning point had been last April, when the Supreme Court made clear that a woman – for the purposes of the Equality Act – meant a biological woman.

She claimed that the ruling in For Women Scotland vs The Scottish Ministers provided journalists with the “basis of challenge” against those who insisted that men could decide to be women.

Again – come on. Legions of women have been doing that for more than ten years – Julie Bindel, Helen Joyce, Kathleen Stock, JKR, and on and on, as have men such as Graham Linehan and Colin Wright.

She pointed out that “until the Supreme Court ruling on it, Keir Starmer himself was saying trans women are women”.

Yes but that’s because he was being a trendy coward, not because the question was really open.

There’s a lot of that around.

Big article at the Telegraph on the capture of the BBC. I’m short on time today so I’ll just leave a couple of bookmarks.

A former BBC News boss has claimed she was driven out of the top job by trans activists.

Fran Unsworth, the director of BBC News from 2018 to 2022, said she had been bullied out of the role by gender ideologues employed by the corporation.

Speaking for the first time since leaving the BBC, Ms Unsworth said: “I would actually say it drove me out, just dealing with the progressive editorial issues and the bullying around them all. It was incredibly difficult.”

Been there done that. Freethought Blogs was and is not the BBC, but the miasma is the same.

In an interview with her former colleague Rob Burley, published by UnHerd, Ms Unsworth said BBC News had become “increasingly unmanageable” during her tenure.

“It was bullying,” she said. “But it wasn’t just the trans issue. There was lots and lots of bullying going on about all sorts of things: people didn’t want to hear from certain points of view; they’d ‘no platform’ them; all that safe-spaces shit.”

And the “incredibly vulnerable” shit – the wildly exaggerated doom-mongering about what a tragic fate it is to be a man who pretends to be a woman, combined with the joyous indifference to the fate of women pushed out of their own institutions and politics and spaces.

Ms Unsworth suggested that programme editors had avoided critical reporting on trans issues for fear of being attacked by their own colleagues.

She claimed that news reporters came under an “awful lot of pressure” from “other parts of the BBC if they felt that the editorial direction of the story was not supporting their particular point of view on it”.

Yep. Again: been there, seen that.

However, problems with the BBC’s coverage of trans issues continued after Ms Unsworth’s departure.

Last year, The Telegraph published a leaked memo from Michael Prescott, the corporation’s editorial standards adviser, in which he claimed its trans coverage had been subject to “effective censorship” by specialist LGBT reporters.

But there is no LGBT. It’s a mirage. T is not LGB; T is the monster substituted for the real baby.

While Ms Unsworth rejected claims that Stonewall had directly influenced editorial output, she said the charity’s gender-affirmative ideology had become pervasive and was creating problems for reporters.

“Nobody, ever, ever said to me as director of news, ‘you need to get points in the Stonewall league table’,” she said. But she acknowledged that “there was a sea in which we all swam… an atmosphere. We need to be kind to transitioning people. It’s a social phenomenon. And I think this ‘be kind’ thing was at the heart of it.”

Oh hell yes it was. But why? Why the desperate eagerness to “be kind” to people pushing such a ridiculous and women-harming ideology?

To be continued.

Big article at Unherd on the capture of the BBC. I’m short on time today so I’ll just leave a couple of bookmarks.

A former BBC News boss has claimed she was driven out of the top job by trans activists.

Fran Unsworth, the director of BBC News from 2018 to 2022, said she had been bullied out of the role by gender ideologues employed by the corporation.

Speaking for the first time since leaving the BBC, Ms Unsworth said: “I would actually say it drove me out, just dealing with the progressive editorial issues and the bullying around them all. It was incredibly difficult.”

Been there done that. Freethought Blogs was and is not the BBC, but the miasma is the same.

In an interview with her former colleague Rob Burley, published by UnHerd, Ms Unsworth said BBC News had become “increasingly unmanageable” during her tenure.

“It was bullying,” she said. “But it wasn’t just the trans issue. There was lots and lots of bullying going on about all sorts of things: people didn’t want to hear from certain points of view; they’d ‘no platform’ them; all that safe-spaces shit.”

And the “incredibly vulnerable” shit – the wildly exaggerated doom-mongering about what a tragic fate it is to be a man who pretends to be a woman, combined with the joyous indifference to the fate of women pushed out of their own institutions and politics and spaces.

Ms Unsworth suggested that programme editors had avoided critical reporting on trans issues for fear of being attacked by their own colleagues.

She claimed that news reporters came under an “awful lot of pressure” from “other parts of the BBC if they felt that the editorial direction of the story was not supporting their particular point of view on it”.

Yep. Again: been there, seen that.

However, problems with the BBC’s coverage of trans issues continued after Ms Unsworth’s departure.

Last year, The Telegraph published a leaked memo from Michael Prescott, the corporation’s editorial standards adviser, in which he claimed its trans coverage had been subject to “effective censorship” by specialist LGBT reporters.

But there is no LGBT. It’s a mirage. T is not LGB; T is the monster substituted for the real baby.

While Ms Unsworth rejected claims that Stonewall had directly influenced editorial output, she said the charity’s gender-affirmative ideology had become pervasive and was creating problems for reporters.

“Nobody, ever, ever said to me as director of news, ‘you need to get points in the Stonewall league table’,” she said. But she acknowledged that “there was a sea in which we all swam… an atmosphere. We need to be kind to transitioning people. It’s a social phenomenon. And I think this ‘be kind’ thing was at the heart of it.”

Oh hell yes it was. But why? Why the desperate eagerness to “be kind” to people pushing such a ridiculous and women-harming ideology?

To be continued.

Of course he did.

Trump prepared for this summit in a way that few if any presidents have done before previous summits—which is to say, he barely prepared at all. Usually, the National Security Council holds interagency meetings—first among midlevel experts, then with Cabinet secretaries and the president himself—to hammer out positions on various major issues. Advance meetings are then held with counterparts from the other country to work out an agenda and to agree on as many issues as possible before the heads of state sit down to talk.

By contrast, Trump held no such meetings, not formally anyway. The list of officials and executives that he brought with him to Beijing included no China specialists, not even the few who hold key positions in the departments of State and Defense.

As usual, Trump thought that he could wing it and that his presumed friendship with Xi would pave the way for vast progress and profits, which he could brag about back home to boost the economy, maybe end the war in Iran, and in any case restore his popularity before this fall’s midterms.

Why does he think he can wing it? Because he thinks he’s very clever. Why does he think that? Because he’s very notclever.

And yet, it keeps working for him.

It’s like a jigsaw puzzle, or a lock. There’s something about the US that makes it sufficiently receptive to the bullshit of a trump to put him in charge of everything. It’s weird.

Seriously?

I won’t stand for any misgendering, says Holyrood presiding officer

The newly elected Kenny Gibson says when it comes to preferred pronouns, MSPs should respect what people wish to be called.

There’s no such thing as “preferred pronouns” meaning inaccurate third person singular pronouns to refer to people who think they can change sex. No, legislators of all people should not promote the lie that sex is a matter of assertion as opposed to physical reality.

As for “respect what people wish to be called” – what if they wish to be called King Charles, or Betty Boop, or Asterix, or Pope Barbara, or Doctor Strangelove?

Holyrood’s newly elected presiding officer will crack down on MSPs who misgender their new trans and non-binary colleagues.

In an interview with The Times, Kenny Gibson, who opposed Nicola Sturgeon’s gender reform legislation in 2022, said he would take incidents as they come.

But he made it clear that he would not tolerate politicians deliberately or maliciously refusing to use the chosen pronouns of the newly elected Green MSPs Iris Duane and Q Manivannan.

Blah blah blah – so now cranky teenagers get to make the rules for what legislators can say? We don’t get to “choose” the pronouns other people refer to us by which, and legislators should not promote the lie that people can swap sex, let alone be forced to do so.

“You have to respect what that person wants to be called,” Gibson said. “And if someone doesn’t do that, then you have to call that out in the chamber and you have to take the appropriate action.”

No you don’t have to respect what any person wants to be called if that want is ridiculous or childish or worse. It depends. In ordinary life sure, we call people what they want to be called, but when things become not ordinary, we may have damn good reason not to. Trump wants to be called a brilliant gorgeous rock star of a man and we do not have to call him that.

“If there’s a clear issue of it looks like it’s being deliberate, then you have to act on that because you can’t have someone, a member of the parliament, feeling undervalued or disrespected.”

Think about how female members of the parliament feel.