Author: Ophelia Benson

  • It absolutely shouldn’t ever have

    Yes it damn well does.

    Part 2:

    Rosie Duffield MP

    @RosieDuffield1

    ·

    A reminder that these people want to kill women like me simply because I’m a feminist, and because I want to preserve legal single sex spaces for women, free from biological men with male genitals. A reminder that most Labour MPs would rather isolate and condemn women like me than support us. A reminder that the *Women* and Equalities Select Committee has never, and will never hold an inquiry on the specific and open calls by men in balaclavas to kill women like me, a member of that committee. A reminder that, while I am not allowed to walk to work alone, most Labour MPs think that the ‘rights’ of a few huge angry men who wish to occupy our spaces, and yell “punch a terf” outside my workplace, are more important than women like me. A reminder that the Labour Party investigated and suspended women like me for liking tweets and championed the mediocre men who actively tried to have us barred. A reminder that in 2026, this is still very much a world in which a few men are more important to most politicians than all women.

    A few men who insult women by pretending to be women. The layers of irony and insult go on and on.

  • Their lovely assistant

    The language is so…what it is.

    Conservative politician Jens Spahn and his husband have announced that they have become parents with the help of a surrogate mother in the US. “It’s hard to put this feeling into words.” Spahn told German mass-circulation tabloid BILD. “My husband has become a dad, and so have I. Georg is our whole world.”

    With the help of? You mean she gestated and delivered this poor baby? She’s just some unimportant bystander who was nice enough to store the baby inside her body for nine months and then hand it over?

    The news has sparked a political debate because such a procedure would be prohibited in Germany.

    A surrogate mother makes her body available to carry a baby to term and is typically paid for doing so. Spahn’s party, the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) is staunchly opposed to making this legal in Germany.

    As recently as February 2026, the party passed a resolution reiterating this at their federal party convention.

    “In light of ethical, legal and practical concerns regarding surrogacy, the CDU of Germany reaffirms its demand that surrogacy — including altruistic models — remain prohibited in Germany in order to prevent abuse, exploitation and health risks,” read the resolution.

    Jens Spahn, Germany’s former federal Health Minister and currently leader of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group in the Bundestag, was present at the convention. At the time, a surrogate mother based in the US, was already pregnant with the child of Daniel Funke, Spahn’s husband.

    Do what I say, not what I do, eh?

    Throughout his career, Spahn has consistently expressed criticism of surrogacy. In 2015, he told GQ magazine: “As a gay man and a Christian, I personally find it very difficult to come to terms with the idea of a ‘rented womb.’”

    However, he added at the time: “Accepting that I will not become a father naturally requires a great deal of humility. I don’t know if I can muster that.”

    This is one major reason men have always kept women under strict control. If women are free to say no to a man who wants her to gestate his child, well, then he won’t become a father, and that’s just too much for any man to bear. They can’t always muster the will to bear it. Sorry, wims, that’s just how it is.

    In 2020, the opposition neoliberal Free Democratic Party (FDP) sought to initiate a debate on liberalizing Germany’s surrogacy laws, when Spahn was health minister. He opposed the move, citing the CDU’s familiar arguments, but also arguing that surrogacy could lead to “particular difficulties in the child’s sense of identity.” Now, he stands accused of double standards.

    Gosh, ya think?

  • Angry at the fact

    Green as in bile.

    Scottish Greens MSP Maggie Chapman is raging at new guidance being brought in across the UK which will ban biological men from using female changing rooms and toilets. The Equality and Human Rights Commission’s (EHRC) Code of Practice will officially come into force from August 5.

    There’s nothing very new about banning men from women’s toilets and changing rooms. The whole point of creating women’s toilets and changing rooms in the first place was to make it possible for women to have lives in public as well as private. This new thing about letting men bluster their way in is just that, a new thing. It’s also a bad thing. You’d think a female MP would be able to understand that, but trans thinking is not good for MP brains.

    Ms Chapman is angry at the fact the new law is going to be active next month, claiming it would negatively impact [harm] the lives of transgender people across the UK. 

    Even if that’s true, what about the lives of women? Why doesn’t Chapman get angry about harm to the lives of women? Why is Chapman so indifferent to women? When she is one herself?

     She said: “August 5th will be a shameful day for human rights and a devastating blow for trans people who have been fearing this for a long time.

    “At a time when hate crimes are rising and anti-trans hostility has become increasingly mainstream in our politics, this cruel and punishing guidance will only pour fuel on the fire. It will make life harder, less safe and more humiliating for trans people across the country.”

    What about women? What about hate crimes against women? What about hostility to women? Including in politics? Yours, for instance? What about your hostility to women? What about the way men who claim to be women have made life harder, less safe and more humiliating for women across the country?

    “It means that in the weeks and months ahead, more trans people will be challenged, harassed and forced to justify themselves for simply using services and spaces they have accessed for decades.”

    Mm. Compelling. Men have been simply abusing and assaulting women for decades, too; does that mean we have a duty to let them continue abusing and assaulting women?

    She called on Andy Burnham to “scrap this divisive guidance” so that “fear and division” isn’t stoked. She concluded: “Andy Burnham should work with those affected to build a fairer system that protects everyone’s safety without stripping away the rights and dignity of trans people.”

    But it doesn’t, you stupid addled ideologically blind fool. The system you want doesn’t protect everyone’s safety. Letting men bounce into women’s spaces whenever they feel like it is not protecting everyone’s safety. Use your damn brain instead of your Box of Slogans.

  • Threatening and abusive correspondence

    Entirely deserved.

    JK Rowling has threatened to sue Amnesty International after her women’s charity was “blacklisted”.

    Beira’s Place – a support centre for female sexual assault victims founded by the Harry Potter author – was mentioned in a list of 117 organisations that Amnesty accused of setting back human rights for women and gay people in the UK.

    The human rights charity apologised for the report and said it had been withdrawn while an internal review took place.

    But lawyers acting for Beira’s Place have accused Amnesty of defaming Beira’s Place by classing it as an “anti-rights” group “targeting the rights of women”.

    Well, yes. It’s the way they – gender-huggers in general, not just Amnesty – class all of us. We’re evil hateful bigoted malicious monsters, not the women defending our rights we keep saying we are, not same-sex attracted people defending their rights, not men in solidarity with us. Just monsters all the way down.

    Since the publication of the “deeply damaging” briefing earlier this month, the Edinburgh-based centre had received “threatening and abusive correspondence” and a 600 per cent spike in website visits from people not intending to use its services, its lawyers claimed.

    The centre had had to take extra administrative measures to provide staffing support to address the disruption, they added.

    I didn’t know that. How horrible. It’s a rape crisis centre, not a den of monsters.

    I hope she does sue them. I hope Amnesty is forced to donate a ton of cash to Beira’s Place.

  • Memetics

    This may be nothing or it may be something. I sort of want to stash it as a bookmark, in case it is something. I say “sort of” because it could so easily be nothing.

    I still don’t quite understand how Maugham can say so confidently that BashBack’s “direct action” is non-violent. What is balaclava man with raised hammer supposed to suggest if not violence? A plumbing job on a chilly day? I don’t think so. Plumbers don’t hold their hammers with both hands and raised above their shoulders.

  • He hoped

    So apparently “Heather” has been arrested.

    An employee of the University of Aberdeen who posted on social media about the death of Ann Widdecombe has been charged by police.

    …

    Before it was known that Widdecombe had been murdered, a 50-year-old employee of the University of Aberdeen allegedly posted that she hoped she had died an “extremely painful death” and that she was “handcuffed to the bed as she screamed in agony”.

    that HE hoped. There is only one woman who is the subject of that paragraph; the other person is not a woman. The fact that he’s not a woman is extremely relevant, so it’s appallingly bad journalism to conceal the fact. It’s also just plain old-fashioned lying. A news item about a man hoping a murdered woman was tortured is very much about who is a woman and who is a man, and the vile sadistic Heather Herbert is a man.

    Journalism really needs to stop lying about this.

  • Concerns

    GB News on Amnesty’s booboo:

    Amnesty International has offered a grovelling apology for condemning JK Rowling’s women’s abuse charity as “anti-rights”.

    The NGO previously listed the author’s Beira’s Place support service on a “blacklist”, accusing it of harming the rights of gay people and women in Britain.

    The blacklist includ[ed] the names of 117 organisations, including For Women Scotland – whose action led to the historic Supreme Court ruling that the definition of a woman under the Equality Act is based on biological sex.

    Another group mentioned in the list was Sex Matters – which campaigns for the protection of single-sex spaces.

    Well after all, what right do women have to campaign for the protection of single-sex spaces? If women want single-sex spaces they should stay in their kitchens, god damn it.

    Amnesty’s 22-page document – which has since been withdrawn – described Beira’s Place as part of an “organised anti-rights movement targeting the rights of women and LGBT+ people” in Britain.

    Honestly you’d think Amnesty would be more cautious that. UK libel law is notoriously easy to trigger.

    It accused organisations such as Ms Rowling’s of “drawing on concerns about children’s safety and wellbeing, family life or social change to build support for their campaigns”.

    That’s my favorite bit. It couldn’t be that she just plain cites reasonable concerns, no, it has to be that she’s doing it to build support for her campaign. What campaign? The one with the concerns she’s drawing on. How do they know she doesn’t have actual concerns about children’s safety and wellbeing, and women’s rights, and men’s intrusions and interruptions and takeovers?

    They don’t. They don’t know that at all. It doesn’t even make any sense. If she doesn’t have the concerns, why is she doing anything at all? Because she knows it teases?

    After pulling the blacklist, Amnesty has since claimed it was published without the usual due diligence, and has said it has launched an internal review.

    Oh really. Why’s that then? Why was it published without the usual due diligence?

    I bet we can guess. I bet it was because trans ideology and trans bullying are such hot tickets, and they wanted some of that sweet sweet love.

    A spokesman for the organisation said: “We regret that this briefing was uploaded to our website without going through the established internal review processes that are in place to ensure consistency, accuracy and alignment with Amnesty International UK’s positions.

    “Its use of language does not reflect the position of Amnesty International UK, which is why it was promptly removed.

    “We remain committed to defending human rights, including both the rights of women and the rights of trans people.”

    But what are the rights of trans people? Is there a right to force people to agree that one is the sex one is not? Is there a right to punish people who refuse to agree that one is the sex one is not? Is there a right to take the jobs and prizes and honors intended for the sex one is not?

    I don’t think any of those items are rights. I think purported trans rights intrude dangerously on women’s rights and I think we need much more free discussion of them, not less.

  • Close your eyes and idennify

    Bev Jackson provides some background on Amnesty:

    In the UK, the indefatigable women’s rights group For Women Scotland (of whom the late YouTube genius Magdalen Berns was a founding member) achieved a significant victory against the Scottish Ministers at the UK Supreme Court. On 16 April 2025, the Court ruled that for the purposes of the Equality Act 2010 and related legislation and regulations, “sex” means (and has always meant) biological sex and that “woman” means (and has always meant) biological woman. That means that all single-sex provisions such as changing rooms and prisons must indeed be single-sex. The inclusion of any male, however he identifies, means that the provision would no longer be single-sex. (Just as it has been observed (not by the Supreme Court!) that a single peanut in a supposedly peanut-free dish is not peanut-free).

    LGB Alliance and lesbian groups intervened on the side of For Women Scotland as “the lesbian interveners,” arguing that under the terms of the Equality Act, correctly understood, a “Gender Recognition Certificate” does not turn a straight man into a lesbian. The Supreme Court agreed that it does not. Another consequence of the ruling was to enshrine the rights of lesbians and gay men to their own single-sex associations. Intervening on the other side was Amnesty International UK.

    Excellent punchline. On the one hand, a “certificate” does not turn a man into a woman or a straight man into a lesbian. On the other hand…Amnesty International? What next? Amnesty International saying pigs have wings, Trump is intelligent and highly educated, up is down, children are adults?

    When Amnesty says, “trans rights are human rights,” it means that trans-identifying people have a “human right” to be treated in all respects as a member of the opposite sex if they so “identify.” 

    And yet when has that ever been a right? When has “they so identify” been the last word on significant personal facts, in defiance of an obvious physical reality?

    In 2025, Amnesty UK tried out a new term of abuse for those who argue for women’s and LGB sex-based rights. In a bizarre rhetorical flourish, it started calling them “anti-rights.” The writer behind a series of documents and interviews making these accusations is Chiara Capraro, a British-Italian Amnesty UK staff member with the title “Gender Justice Programme Director.” This new terminology brands everyone who fights for women’s, lesbians’ and gay men’s sex-based rights “anti-rights.” As if the supposed right of trans-identifying people to be treated as the sex they want is the only right worth defending. To create confusion and to cement this weird notion in the public mind, Capraro lumps gender-critical campaigners together with anti-abortion Evangelical groups funded from the US. Worse still, she calls all those — including groups of therapists and clinicians – who oppose the medical “transitioning” of children “anti-rights.”

    It’s a re-naming cascade. If we can do it with one important fact we can do it with all of them. People are trees; trees are waterfalls; bricks are feathers; feathers are bridges; up is down.

    Capraro carried on like this for quite a while, issuing another report in January 2026, condemning the phrase “sex-based rights,” which she says “do not exist in human rights law.” This is of course incorrect, since the rights and protections enshrined in the Convention on the Elimination of All Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) are explicitly based on sex.

    This is called “using gender as your backstop”.

    Of course there were sporadic protests against the offensive characterization of people campaigning for their sex-based rights as part of an “anti-rights” movement, but it was not until July 2026, when Capraro crossed a line that could be seen from outer space, that Amnesty UK’s position attracted widespread outrage and calls for retractions and apologies in the media. I am trying to imagine how Capraro thought it made sense to include the support service for female rape survivors Beira’s Place, set up and fully funded by JK Rowling, on a list of organizations comprising the UK’s “anti-rights” movement. Nor can I fathom what she was thinking when she included groups of feminist lawyers on her blacklist. Nor how she thought it was compatible with Amnesty UK’s charitable status to suggest that the Charity Commission review the charitable status of the groups concerned.

    Pickling. It’s pickling that does it. Pickle yourself in a fatuous fantasy-based ideology and before you know it you can’t think clearly to save your life.

    On the role of women in the promotion of gender identity doctrine: the writer of the “anti-rights” reports attacking women’s and LGB rights groups and those promoting child safeguarding is Chiara Capraro. The Chief Executive of Amnesty UK is Kerry Moscogiuri. The chief executive officer of Amnesty International – which, despite its opportunistic disavowal of Capraro’s latest antics, is fully on board with the “anti-rights’ narrative — is Dr Agnès Callamard. All women.

    Depressing, isn’t it.

    Extremely.

  • He cautioned the heedless women

    Pompous man tells women what to think and say, then complains when they don’t follow his instructions.

    Where would we be without the Peter Jukeses of the world?

  • That word “exclusion”

    A little look back at Maugham v Rowling a couple of months ago:

    Jolyon Maugham, a campaigning barrister, described Rowling’s definition of “sex-based rights” in the wake of a recent Supreme Court ruling as being “about the exclusion of trans women”, which he said was “mind-blowing”.

    The exclusion of trans women from what, though?

    Certainly not from everything. JKR doesn’t want to exclude men who pretend to be women from public transportation, restaurants, Waitrose, parks, cinemas, theatres, the public highway, medical facilities…the list is endless. She wants, I think it’s fair to say, to exclude them from the definition of women, which is simply a continuation of what has always been the case, and from some spaces and institutions and competitions that are specifically for women. That’s all. It’s not “exclusion” tout court, it’s reasonable exclusion for reasons of safety or fair competition or both.

    Maugham must know that, but he doesn’t word it that way. That is at the very least manipulative as well as unjust. He should stop.

  • Ok Joly, what *does* it mean?

    This is a good one.

    “what it means to oppose trans joy”

    Now is that fair??? I’m not aware of opposing any “trans joy” – what I oppose is trans dogma, trans dogma-enforcement, trans bullying, trans catastrophizing, trans intrusion, trans war on women, trans misogyny.

    I mean, suppose people break into your living space and destroy all your books, paint graffiti on your walls, eat everything in the fridge, piss on all your clothes. It’s not their vandal joy that you object to, it’s their vandalism. A subtle distinction perhaps, but real.

  • They will keep fighting what?

    Hey kids! It’s international nonbineree day!

    They will keep…fighting?

    Fighting what?

    What are we even talking about?

    The Corporate Memphis graphic is certainly no help.

    Are nonbineree people persecuted, excluded, shunned, exploited, bullied, locked up, tortured, denied housing, jobs, promotions? Is it all official? Do bosses tell them “I’m putting you in the mailroom and you’re never getting a promotion”? Do they get lumps of coal for Christmas?

    What exactly will the Liberal Democrats keep fighting?

  • It can’t be anything else

    Maya asks an important question.

    And why is the ability to debate destroyed?

    Because the subject of the debate is childish nonsense.

    Adults don’t “debate” the existence of Mickey Mouse or Harry Potter. Fictions are fictions; there’s nothing to debate.

    Same with trans ideology. No, people can’t change sex. The end. Nothing to debate.

    For debate to make any sense there has to be the possibility of truth on both sides. If one side is just obvious fantasy, the game is pointless.

  • Good clean fun

    Haha, it’s all in good fun, just pretending to stab people as a way of encouraging them to do what we tell them to do, everybody laughed, anyone who didn’t laugh is a prude and a violation of something.

    Green Party councillors attended a transgender rights rally where some protesters repeatedly stabbed darts into an effigy of Andy Burnham, The Times can reveal.

    The demonstration outside Hackney Town Hall called on the Green-run council to refuse to implement the guidance on single-sex spaces. 

    Activists were filmed stabbing darts into the head and eye of an effigy of Burnham, the prime minister in waiting, who has backed the Supreme Court’s ruling on the legal definition of sex and the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s (EHRC) guidance on single-sex services.

    Well there you go. What do people who defend women’s rights deserve? To be stabbed in the eye.

  • Maine’s turn

    ICE scores yet another kill.

    A federal immigration officer fatally shot a motorist in Maine on Monday, the second time in a week that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have used deadly force and at least the ninth time since President Donald Trump began his immigration crackdown.

    Immigrant rights groups identified the man who was killed as a 26-year-old native of Colombia.

    The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said in a post on the social platform X that ICE was surveilling an address for a person with a final order of removal. When ICE tried to stop a vehicle driven by someone coming from that address, “The vehicle attempted to flee the scene and, fearing for public safety, an officer discharged his weapon,” the department said.

    U.S. Sen. Angus King previously said Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told him the officer opened fire after the man tried to use his vehicle as a weapon against ICE agents in Biddeford, a coastal city roughly 15 miles (24 kilometers) southwest of Portland.

    We’ve heard that before.

    A witness said he heard the guy say “I tried to stop.”

  • Using bold images

    The Good Law Project has a new campaign, called “Of course I support trans – I’m not a monster”.

    What does “I support trans” even mean? Is this Maugham trying to sound like a fellow kid? “Bro, I support trans, hur hur”?

    They’ve employed a real artist and everything.

    But most people in the UK think trans people should be left in peace to live their best lives.

    We’ve commissioned public artist Martin Firrell to highlight this majority view, using bold images of a T rex, a shark, and a giant gorilla.

    These monsters are appearing on billboards across the UK, boosting the voice of the silent majority: “Of course I support trans – I’m not a monster.”

    Childish enough yet?

  • Downward trajectory

    NPR reports:

    The New York Times says several of its journalists have been subpoenaed by the Department of Justice over their reporting on Air Force One, describing it as a “brazen act.”

    On Wednesday, the newspaper published an anonymously sourced story that the Secret Service urged President Trump to leave the recent NATO summit in Turkey on an older version of Air Force One instead of the Boeing 747 donated by Qatar last year because of security concerns. The following day, the Times reported, again citing anonymous sources, that the gifted plane lacked “defensive countermeasures that were security features of the old model, including its advanced antimissile capabilities.”

    The four reporters bylined on Wednesday’s article — Julian E. Barnes, Eric Lipton, Tyler Pager and Eric Schmitt — all received subpoenas, according to the Times. The paper said federal agents delivered the subpoenas Friday evening to some reporters at their homes.

    The subpoenas “seek to force the reporters to testify before a federal grand jury in Manhattan on Wednesday,” the Times reported. Their testimony, according to the subpoenas, was requested “in regard to an alleged violation of federal criminal law.”

    “The appearance of Federal law enforcement agents on the doorstep of news reporters should shock the conscience of any American who believes in the Constitution and the press freedom it protects,” David McCraw, senior vice president and deputy general counsel for the Times, said in a statement. “Our journalists report the facts and advance the American public’s right to know how their government is operating and their taxpayer dollars are being used. This brazen act should be seen as nothing more than an attempt to prevent the public from knowing what is happening in their country by intimidating journalists from doing their jobs.”

    We’re zooming down the highway to full-on fascism.

  • Ok, sorry, but still, men

    The usual adamant refusal to be clear.

    Amnesty claims it regrets.

    Amnesty International UK has said it regrets a report which labelled JK Rowling’s sexual assault support centre for women ‘anti-rights’.

    …

    Amnesty International UK has said it regrets a report which labelled JK Rowling’s sexual assault support centre for women ‘anti-rights’.

    Has it said why it regrets the report? Does it regret the report because the report is shit, or because people noticed that it’s shit?

    Amnesty summons up a lot of words:

    “Amnesty International conducts independent research and campaigns on human rights issues worldwide, and works alongside victims and communities on the frontlines of the struggle for dignity and justice. This work includes a long‑standing and explicit commitment to gender justice, including the rights of women, LGBTQI and trans people.”

    Trans people get counted twice. But more to the point: as usual, women must not have their rights supported without instant follow-up mention of LGBTQIZFRDNM people. If you say women have rights you have to mention someone else who has rights; no exceptions. Women must not be allowed to take center stage, ever.

    In a published list of 117 UK organisations, Amnesty International mentions Beira’s Place under “gender critical” in the anti-rights category.

    Amnesty International also condemns For Women Scotland – the group of women who took the  Scottish Government to court over policies which allowed transgender women, born male, to take up female-only spaces on public boards.

    The organisation’s three co-founders – Trina Budge, Marion Calder and Susan Smith – have written to Amnesty to warn the report contributes to “reputational harm” against For Women Scotland.

    The letter states: “We note that your primary charitable object is to promote human rights. Women also have human rights. We recently won a case in Scotland to protect the human rights of incarcerated women in Scotland. The old Amnesty would have taken that case rather than attack the women who brought it.

    “We now ask that you apologise to FWS for the malicious characterisation of our organisation in your report.”

    Women also have human rights. Women are half of humanity, and they are the half that reproduces humanity. Without women, no humanity. You’d think that would count.

  • Underthinking professional whingers

    Jo Bartosch on how Amnesty got so horrible:

    Its new report, ‘A Growing Threat: The Anti-Rights Movement in the UK’, was recently published and then, like a disfavoured comrade, quietly disappeared from the organisation’s website less than 24 hours later. Before its abrupt vanishing act, Amnesty warned that an ‘anti-rights ecosystem’ was threatening ‘the safety of women and LGBT+ people in the UK’. It identified 117 organisations allegedly working to roll back human rights, lumping together American Christian groups with a patchwork of British feminist, lesbian and gay organisations.

    It’s very progressive to tell destructive lies about feminist, lesbian and gay rights organizations.

    That ordinary people might simply have had enough of trans tyranny – or concluded for themselves that sex-based rights are worth defending – doesn’t seem to have occurred to Amnesty’s overeducated, underthinking professional whingers. Nor, apparently, has the unfortunate optics of compiling lists of ideological enemies and then silently deleting it.

    It’s not just the having enough of trans tyranny…it’s the being expected to repeat an obvious lie as if it were true. It’s the being expected to repeat that particular obvious lie – it’s the expecting women to repeat that obvious lie. It’s the expecting the underdog sex to pretend that some members of the overdog sex are not members of the overdog sex. It’s a very bizarre, warped thing to expect, and it reveals an indifference to women that feels all too New Left circa 1970.

    This is the organisation that once presented itself as the conscience of the free world: a champion of dissidents and those who stood up to authoritarian power. Today, Amnesty International resembles the very forces it was created to oppose. It spreads the misinformation it claims to be combating, smears grassroots campaigners as extremists, and casts ordinary people who refuse to deny biological reality as enemies of human rights. The organisation that once defended prisoners of conscience now seems determined to identify a new generation of thoughtcriminals.

    No amnesty for women.

  • Hot water

    The fury at Amnesty is mounting.