Author: Ophelia Benson

Originally a comment by maddog on The Basil question.

The punishment for a crime should never be rape.

That’s our point, numbskull.

It’s no part of a woman prisoner’s punishment to be terrorized by having to share their space with male prisoners. The women are subjected to ogling, leering, threats, voyeurism, touching, groping, and, yes, rape, when men are housed with women in prison.

Why does your concern for prisoner safety only run one way? Grab the smelling salts and the fainting couch over the prospect that men might sexually assault male transgender prisoners, but you become blind and your head becomes empty when it comes to the risks to women prisoners of putting men into the women’s prison. Your solution is simply to transfer the risk to women prisoners because, what? Women? Pfffft! What are they?

Besides, your transperbole is false. Keeping male prisoners who claim to be transgender in the men’s prison does not inevitably subject them to violence. Male prisoners can be segregated from one another for safety. The men’s prison could create a segregated unit for transgender prisoners.

Originally a comment by Artymorty on Slush staff.

It’s interesting that, of all the retail chains in the world, it’s Lush that’s the most dogmatic about trans nonsense.

What is it about Lush specifically that aligns it so perfectly with gender woo?

I asked ChatGPT to “describe the brand and target audience of the retail chain Lush.”

Its reply began with, “Lush is basically ethical maximalism as retail theatre.” It went on to describe “natural-ish cosmetics, anti-corporate vibes, and sensory excess”, and a brand personality that is “sincere but also performative”. The bricks-and-mortar stores are “like a farmers’ market, candy shop, apothecary, activist booth, and theatre workshop mashed together.”

So it’s a giant international corporation that needs something to position itself as activist-y, countercultural, and individual. A bit Starbucks-y in that way. Starbucks, of course, is next on the list of giant international corporations that have gone kookoo for genderpuffs.

Trans, then, is corporate shorthand for “our brand is virtue”. It’s brand-positioning performance.

(No wonder the annual Toronto parade formerly known as Gay Pride is now nothing but flatbed trucks advertising Canada’s banks and media conglomerates, covered in pink, white, and baby blue.)

(It’s also no wonder that Lush was the primary sponsor of the girls-only kids’ music day camp that operated out of the venue I used to manage. That’s the one that had a strict locked-doors, no-males-anywhere-in-the-building-under-any-circumstance-because-there’s-young-girls-here policy, which it promptly discarded by hiring a hulking middle-aged crossdressing man to look after the girls alone.)

We’re gutting women’s rights and mutilating kids so corporations can sell us expensive bath bombs and pumpkin spice lattes while making us feel like we’re supporting our quirky little neighbourhood friends as we hand them our cash.

Imagine how those blue-haired, mastectomy-scarred they/thems are gonna feel in a few years when it dawns on them that their bodies were seen as nothing more than free advertising by corporate bigwigs.

It’s both tragic and pathetic.

Absolute classic.

The punishment for a crime should never be rape

Stop celebrating violence against trans women under the guise of ‘women’s rights’

— Ava Lovelace 🏳️‍⚧️ (@AvaLovelaceX) June 20, 2026

But sir, sir, sir, you are here urging violence against women by pretending that men who call themselves women should be in women’s prisons.

Is there something wrong with your brain?

Working hard as always.

It recites the dogma or it gets the hose.

Shoppers who believed only women could get pregnant were seen as “bigoted” by Lush staff, a former employee claims.

The sales assistant, who asked not to be named, told The Telegraph she saw a customer of the cosmetics retailer become upset, after she asked staff to help her choose a gift for a “pregnant woman” and was directed towards products for “pregnant people”.

In other words after staff rudely “corrected” her by telling her not to say the filthy word “woman”.

She said staff were encouraged to wear badges with preferred pronouns; described as “trans allies” by managers, and could ask customers to leave if they felt they were expressing transphobic views. Some seemed “genuinely excited” at the prospect of confronting people they saw as transphobic, she said.

Yeah no shit. Of course they did. Hey kids, it’s Righteous Denunciation time!

The former staff member contacted The Telegraph following public criticism of a window display at a Lush in Chelmsford, Essex. It showed a tiger with pink, blue and white stripes, and the words “proud of my stripes”. The tiger also bears markings suggestive of “top surgery” to remove breasts.

The display attracted criticism from survivors of breast cancer, who accused the cosmetics retailer of “glorifying the removal of healthy breasts”.

Bucky Ringsell, the artist was painted the mural, said in an Instagram post she had designed the tiger to support and represent people who had undergone top surgery, “myself included”.

But of course it’s not “top surgery”; it’s mutilation.

Staff were encouraged to hand campaign materials to customers, including parents and children, although she had concerns that some of the subjects were “too adult” for children.

This included a 24-page booklet produced by Lush and TransActual called The Dream vs Reality: Creating a World Where Trans People are Safe. It stated that being trans was not a mental illness, called for the ban on puberty blockers to be lifted and backed legal gender self-identification.

Remember when women got this treatment?

No, neither do I.

A Daniel come to judgment!

A judge has ruled that prison guidance which allows some transgender prisoners to be held in jails matching their gender identity, rather than their sex at birth, is unlawful.

Judge Lady Ross said sex segregation in prisons must be based on biological sex, based on a Supreme Court ruling on the definition of a woman in equality law in April last year.

Campaign group For Women Scotland challenged the Scottish government guidance through a judicial review, saying only those born biologically female should be held in the women’s estate.

Lawyers for the government had argued this would breach transgender prisoners’ human rights. The first minister said they will take time to consider the judgement.

Sneery voice: “Lawyers for the government had argued this would breach transgender prisoners’ human rights.” Well what about breaching female prisoners’ rights?! Why is it horrifying to [purportedly] breach transgender prisoners’ human rights but perfectly fine to violate women’s human rights? Why are so many people so happy to throw women to the wolves while the wolves get whatever they demand?

Lady Ross said the guidance was “in conflict with the requirement that prison accommodation be provided separately for men and women” and constituted “a mis-statement of the law”.

She said: “In all the circumstances, the prisons guidance is unlawful.”

But the Scottish government doesn’t care.

First Minister, John Swinney told BBC Scotland Lady Ross’s judgement was complex and the government will take time to consider its implications.

He said: “We will consider all of these details because there are complex issues that are involved, but at this early stage I acknowledge the outcome of the judgement from Lady Ross and the government will consider its findings.

“We will assess the implications the judgement has on carrying out policy in relation to the handling of prisoners.”

He seems to be saying his government will abide by the ruling if it feels like it but not if it doesn’t. He seems to be saying he gets to ignore the ruling.

Via Mostly Cloudy: Jolyon Maugham talking the familiar childish jargon of Tranz Ideology.

"The UK court system is a fucking joke."No facts, no standing, no harm. They get a court to strip the rights of a minority group without them being involved in the case or any factual record."As bad as things are in the US… there are still constitutional restraints that prevent stuff like this."

— Jolyon Maugham KC (@jolyon.goodlawproject.org) 2026-06-19T14:31:21.111Z

“They get a court to strip the rights of a minority group…” What the hell is that supposed to be? “A minority group could mean anything. A group that likes to stroke caterpillars while wearing purple uniforms. A group that dislikes cheese. A group that is smaller than other groups. It means nothing or anything or everything.

He doesn’t mean “minority”; he means “persecuted and ostracized for no good reason”, which is not at all a synonym for “minority”.

It may seem like a trivial point, but vagueness of language, aka obscured meaning, is crucial to the success of Trans Everything Or Else. If the ideology is made clear every time, fans stop being fans.

Good.

The Court of Session has ruled that it is unlawful for trans women to be housed in female prisons.

The campaign group For Women Scotland brought a petition for judicial review challenging the Scottish Government’s policy on the treatment of trans prisoners.

On Friday, Lady Ross published a decision ruling the guidance unlawful.

It’s pretty simple. Men are a potential threat to women while the reverse is not true. The fun of a few men should not cancel the safety of women.

During hearings in February, Gerry Moynihan KC for the Scottish Government told the Court of Session in Edinburgh it is right for ministers to take a “case-by-case” approach on transgender prisoners.

So should we also take a “case-by-case” approach to throwing toddlers into the bears’ enclosure at the zoo?

There was “no real dispute” that the seasons for sex segregation in prisons are to protect the safety of women and secure the privacy and dignity of both women and men, and at no point did the Scottish Ministers or Lord Advocate argue that a male prisoner, who is not a trans woman, could be admitted to a female prison.

Those last two commas just make a muddle instead of clarity. It should read “at no point did the Scottish Ministers or Lord Advocate argue that a male prisoner who is not a trans woman could be admitted to a female prison.”

However, it was argued that there are cases in which human rights concerns may make it appropriate to house a trans person in a prison of the opposite sex.

But human rights concerns are for women as well as men. Housing a man in a women’s prison puts women at risk. The solution to risk for men should not be transferring the risk to women.

Lady Ross also wrote: “Insofar as the prisons guidance allows SPS to accommodate trans prisoners in prisons for the opposite biological sex, it is in conflict with the requirement that prison accommodation be provided separately for men and women. That constitutes a mis-statement of the law.”

It’s a mis-statement of the law at the expense of women. Always at the expense of women, this crap.

Speaking in Aberdeen, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch was asked if it is time for the SNP to accept defeat on the issue.

She said: “Absolutely. It is time to draw a line under this. I do not understand why the SNP want to die on this hill of putting men in women’s prisons. It’s extraordinary.”

Same old same old. Germaine Greer: “Women have very little idea of how much men hate them.”

The Beeb on the For Women Scotland win:

A judge has ruled that prison guidance which allows some transgender prisoners to be held in jails matching their gender identity, rather than their sex at birth, is unlawful.

Judge Lady Ross said sex segregation in prisons must be based on biological sex, based on a Supreme Court ruling on the definition of a woman in equalities law in April last year.

Campaign group For Women Scotland had challenged the Scottish government guidance through a judicial review, saying only those born biologically female should be held in the women’s estate.

Lawyers for the government argued this would breach transgender prisoners’ human rights and create an unacceptable risk of suicide.

And what about women prisoners? What about their rights? What about the unacceptable risks to them?

For Women Scotland brought the case following its successful appeal to the Supreme Court about the definition of a woman in the Equality Act.

Susan Smith, a co-director of the group, said it was “delighted” to have won a “comprehensive victory”.

“We hope that, in future, the Scottish government will start to listen to us rather than the lobby groups who drafted these policies and have so egregiously misled MSPs and MPs,” she said.

“We should never have needed to take this case and we hope this will be the last time that we are forced to go to law to defend the rights of women.”

But pretending that women are oppressing men is such fun!

The Guardian solemnly presents us with a think piece written by a 14-year-old girl. The girl is a boy, and I don’t believe he wrote the piece. I’ll show you why.

For as long as I can remember, I have known I am a girl. That certainty is as instinctive as knowing I am right-handed. It is difficult to explain to someone who has never been transgender or loved someone who is, but I have never lived this way to gain an advantage or take something from someone else. I live this way to honor what I know is true.

I transitioned at four years old. By sixth grade, my identity was public. I grew used to the double takes, the questions, the quiet skepticism. Most of it did not bother me. Curiosity, even when clumsy, is human. People understand gender differently, and I was taught to respect all ideas, just as I hope others respect mine.

Does that sound like a 14 to you?

But what occurred on 4 May was not respectful, nor was it curiosity – it was a blatant attack on the values I have always been taught to prioritize.

Does that? “nor was it” – is that a construction children use a lot? Do they say “prioritize”?

Days earlier, I competed in the Prep League Finals, a track championship for a small private school league in southern California. In the lane next to me was my older sister. Despite running on an irritated knee, my sister was chasing a likely victory in the 400 meters. She had won each of our prior races. So, when I crossed the finish line just milliseconds before her, I was as surprised as everyone else. My teammates rushed to me, cheering wildly. My sister wrapped me in a hug. My parents celebrated from the stands. It was a moment of joy, as simple, fleeting and shared as the victory of any other child.

Does the Guardian not have any sane editors? How can they solemnly tell us a 14 wrote this?

Through each degrading claim and ostentatious headline, I realized the conversation was more malevolent than I anticipated. Not because of what they said about my performance, but because of what they said about my character. This was not a healthy debate about fairness in sports; it was about my worth as a person.

I give up; my eyes can’t roll any farther back.

Countless adults absently unlocked their phones and devastated a 14 year old. It didn’t matter that my sister couldn’t have been prouder or that the scientific evidence on trans women’s advantages is mixed or even (and especially) that no child would upend their life for the chance of winning a race a decade later. It was far easier to comment than to question. Easier to react than to understand.

We can have conversations about fairness and equity in sports. In fact, we should. But the way we are conducting them is failing us. The line between debate and dehumanization has not just been crossed – it’s been erased. Opinion is being presented as fact. Disagreement is becoming ridicule. What masquerades as dialogue is amounting to something closer to public shaming.

There are six more paragraphs of this highly adult manipulative writing. The Graun has lost its tiny mind.

Trump the genius at diplomacy:

Italian Prime ​Minister Giorgia Meloni accused her one-time close ally Donald Trump of fabricating a story about her on Friday, after ‌the U.S. President told an Italian TV channel that she had “begged” him to take a photo with her at a G7 summit.

Meloni said she was “astonished” by his comments, which were “completely made up”. She also chided him for acting with far greater deference to the enemies of the West than he does towards old, established allies.

She’s astonished that he’s a ridiculous fool who tells ridiculous stories that flatter him at the expense of everyone else? Does she know him at all?

Underscoring how ​much Trump’s comments have angered Meloni’s government, Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani announced he was cancelling a planned visit to ​the U.S. next week.

No matter. Trump will explain that it’s because she’s so in love with him that she has to avoid him for the sake of the children. [Children not specified.]

Video from the event in ​France showed Meloni and Trump deep in conversation, sitting side-by-side on a small sofa, but the U.S. leader suggested he had merely indulged her by chatting ​with her.

“She’s probably happy I talked to her. I didn’t have to talk to her,” Trump was quoted as saying by La7 TV channel in a brief interview, after he himself asked the journalist about Italy’s prime minister.

“She begged me to take a picture with her. She wanted a picture with me so ​badly. I wouldn’t have taken it, but I felt sorry for her,” Trump said, according to La7’s translation.

Well, see, it’s like this. There was that time back in high school when the prettiest girl in the whole school had a huge crush on him but he just wasn’t into her. It happens to him every year or so. No make that every month. It just never stops.

One of Meloni’s closest political allies, who usually shuns ​the media spotlight, struck out at Trump using a tone that would have been unthinkable beforehand.

“It is ​unclear whether out ⁠of intent or ineptitude (Trump) is wrecking the historic relations between the United States and Europe,” Giovanbattista Fazzolari, undersecretary to the prime minister’s office, said in a statement.

Guys guys guys don’t take it so seriously. Trump was just messing. He was just cutting other people down to enhance his own shimmering glory. It’s what he does. The fact that it’s both ludicrous and disgusting is irrelevant. He’s the boss.

Breaking news!

NEW: For Women Scotland win again! Scottish government's policy of putting men in female prisons ruled unlawful.

Full judgment: https://t.co/1ApTIJfBV2 pic.twitter.com/HqPROAvrsF

— Nick Wallis (@nickwallis) June 19, 2026

Well, if you make a rabid Fox News host the Secretary of Defense, this is what you get.

A major flu outbreak has sickened nearly 160 troops at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas less than two months after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that U.S. troops would no longer be required to be vaccinated for the flu, defense officials said.

The outbreak at the base in San Antonio raced through an Air Force Basic Military Training wing, where new recruits sleep on bunk beds in open bays and share meals at large communal tables.

…

In the weeks since Mr. Hegseth’s vaccine policy took effect on April 21, only about 40 percent of Air Force trainees have opted to take the vaccine, which had previously been mandatory, an Air Force official said.

In the aftermath of the outbreak, the Air Force issued an exception to the voluntary vaccine policy, requiring that all recruits at Lackland get flu shots — part of a broader effort to stem the virus’s spread.

Mr. Hegseth cast his decision to make the flu vaccine optional as a matter of religious freedom and medical autonomy.

Flu vaccines of course have nothing whatever to do with religion and so have nothing to do with religious freedom. Quack notions about vaccination are not “religious” except in the sense that both rely on just making shit up. People shouldn’t have “medical autonomy” because people don’t have “disease autonomy” or “death autonomy” or “contagion autonomy.”

“Under the disastrous Biden administration, this Pentagon waged an unrelenting war on our warriors on many fronts, including when it came to denying them simple medical autonomy and the freedom to express their religious convictions,” he said in a video announcing his decision in April.

Stupid putz. Religion is wholly irrelevant to disease control. It doesn’t matter what your religious convictions are when it’s a question of spreading a dangerous illness instead of getting vaccinated to prevent spreading illness. If Baby Jesus doesn’t want us to prevent the spread of disease he can go join Hegseth in the Asylum for Religious Lunatics.

The grooming gangs horror goes on and on.

Earlier this week, the National Crime Agency (NCA) announced that the first set of closed “grooming gang” cases, where viable lines of inquiry may have been missed, have been referred back to police from eight force areas.

Those forces have been told to reopen the cases and consider what further investigation is needed.

Why? Because apparently the police too swiftly and easily closed the cases on account of how hey these are working class girls so they must be lying because they’re racists.

Operation Beaconport was launched last year in response to Baroness Casey’s recommendations into group-based sexual exploitation, otherwise known as “grooming gangs”.

As part of this, the NCA asked all police forces in England and Wales to examine 15 years’ worth of records, and to identify and refer cases of group-based child sexual abuse and exploitation that were reported to police in that time, involved two or more suspects, and where a decision was made by police or the CPS to take no further action.

…

Initial reviews have indicated that potential lines of inquiry in some cases had been missed due to “human error.”

Rape Crisis England & Wales welcomes this week’s announcement. We want justice for survivors.

However, Casey’s findings were very clear: too many victims and survivors were not listened to, not believed, and not supported in the way they should be. Many were further traumatised by a criminal justice system that was meant to protect them. This must not be repeated, and police must learn from past mistakes, especially where police-initiated contact may be involved.

Why were they not listened to, not believed, not supported? Because class, and immigration, and Islam. These nasty slutty girls must be racists and Islamophobes, so into the dead file their reports go.

Trump wallowing in the sewer again.

It’s real. I checked.

I’ve gone down a bit of a rabbit hole, looking into the bilge about the afterlife according to Islam – except that it’s not the afterlife, it’s the afterlife for men. But it doesn’t say so. It just takes it for granted.

You know the drill. 70 virgins blah blah. But what does that mean? Do women get 70 virgins?

What can I possibly mean by asking that? What women?

Women are so trivial and non-existent that it’s not even specified that the 70 virgins are female virgins that men get to fuck all day every day for eternity, let alone that there’s no parallel treat for women, or awareness that women wouldn’t want it if there were. Men are people and get decorative sex robots for eternity; women don’t exist so they don’t need any decorative sex robots, and anyway it would be an outrage to have male decorative sex robots – men are important!

So who even are these virgins? And how are they virgins when the men are fucking them all day every day? Why is it so important and thrilling that the men get 70 virgins when the virgins won’t be virgins any more after the first 20 seconds or so? Except that’s never said, so do the virgins just re-virginize every 20 seconds or so?

And what are women doing while all this is going on? Making snacks for the exhausted virgins-havers?

It’s all very…peculiar.

Originally a comment by Artymorty on It’s complex blah blah blah.

For the purposes of trans, the definitions of man and woman are incredibly straightforward:

A woman is the biological category of human that a heterosexual man is sexually aroused by. A man is the biological category of human that a heterosexual man is sexually averse to.

A transwoman insists he is a woman because he wants his body to arouse heterosexual males (either himself in the case of AGPs, or other men in the case of gays who “go trans”).

A transman insists she is a man because she does not want her body to be in the category that heterosexual males are aroused by. Either directly, because male sexual attention makes her uncomfortable, or indirectly, because she wants to socialize in the company of men and women without the burden of sexual objectification interfering with her social standing — she wants to be a “bro”, plain and simple.

The entire trans phenomenon rests on the innate human ability to tell the sexes apart. It does the exact opposite of demonstrating that the boundaries between the sexes are complex. It just gives people the false hope that lots of expensive, experimental drugs and surgeries can fool other people’s innate sex detectors. They can’t, of course. Not for very long. Even the best-masked transwomen and transmen let slip their true sex after a little bit of in-person company. And certainly in intimate company, you can tell. In fact, in many jurisdictions it’s the law that you *have* to tell: in places like the UK and California, despite their rah-rah trans nonsense, you can still be charged as a sex offender if you misrepresent your sex to someone before having sex with them.

Mary Trump is annoying the uncle from hell.

Trump settled a $100 million lawsuit against his niece, Mary Trump, over accusations that she leaked information to The New York Times for an investigation into his finances.

Mary Trump has garnered attention for her vocal critiques of her estranged uncle’s politics and administration and is a rare member of the Trump family to speak out against the president. The settlement ends one of the most personal legal battles in the president’s orbit, stemming from Mary Trump’s role in providing family tax documents to The New York Times.

…

“The parties are pleased to report they have reached a settlement and anticipate being able to stipulate to the dismissal of this action with prejudice in the ensuing weeks, following completion of certain conditions precedent,” the letter reads.

I hope she humiliated him.

Piffle.

It’s easy to see what they’re doing here. They’re deploying the fact that all women are complex, because humans are complex, to pretend that the word itself is complex in the same way. It’s not.

By the same token the definition of “oak tree” is not particularly complex, but oak trees themselves are complex. This simple comparison could be used for many many many specific examples.

The British Museum is complex, but locating it on a map is not.

The Great Wall of China is complex, but defining it is not.

Oceans are complex, but a basic definition of the word is not.

It should be a labeled fallacy of some kind to pretend that defining a word is like writing a biography or history or scientific paper about the word being defined.

Originally a comment by What a Maroon on Much expert.

“All the rights that a woman has.”

Let’s see – the right to be paid 20% less than men.

The right to be overlooked for promotions.

The right to be ignored.

The right to have men claim their good ideas.

The right to be raped.

The right to be forced to carry a pregnancy to term against their will, even at the risk of permanent injury or death.

The right in some countries to be forced to wear a burqa.

The right in some countries to be denied an education.

The right in some countries to be allowed outside the house only in the presence of a male relative.

So many rights they’re being denied.