Author: Ophelia Benson

Man assaults women, women are arrested for being assaulted by man. Welcome to Iran.

Two women have been arrested in Iran after being attacked with yoghurt, seemingly for not covering their hair in public.

In the video, which went viral, two female customers are approached by the man, who begins talking to them.

He then takes what appears to be a tub of yoghurt from a shelf and angrily throws it over their heads.

Iran’s judiciary said the two women have been detained for showing their hair, which is illegal in Iran.

Not their public hair, mind you, but the stuff on their heads. It’s so filthy and so arousing that all women must be tightly bandaged to conceal it.

Not at all!

Look, all he wants to do is play football on the women’s team so that he can injure some women. What’s the big deal?

An Australian amateur football league is receiving backlash from parents and players who are voicing frustrations after learning that a man who identifies as a woman has been dominating the female soccer league and injuring female players.

Football New South Wales’ League One reportedly has five trans-identified male players, but one player in particular has led the 1st Grade goal kickers table, with seven goals. 

Initial reports from The Daily Mail Australia had chosen not to identify the player, censoring images of him and declining to provide his name. However, Reduxx can confirm the player is trans activist YouTuber Riley J. Dennis.

He’s expressing his genuine authentic real true sincere veritable self.

Riley Dennis was a popular trans activist YouTuber who has 113,000 subscribers. He has since stopped creating content but, during the height of his internet career, he received backlash for a controversial video in which he called “genital preferences” transphobic.

Well they are though. Obviously. You’re supposed to do your preferences according to gender, not genitals.

Dennis was also a writer for the self-described “feminist” publication Everyday Feminism where he has published pieces such as “Here’s Why Misgendering Trans People Is an Act of Violence” and “Some Children Are Transgender – 5 Explanations for Why That’s Perfectly Okay.”

Seems like a hundred years ago, doesn’t it.

Jennifer O’Connell at the Irish Times joins the crowd throwing mud at JK Rowling.

When we are most certain is the point at which we should most question ourselves, remarks JK Rowling sensibly in a new podcast series, The Witch Trials of JK Rowling. For a moment, she seems to be experiencing a revelation about her own role in the events of the past few years. But no: she is referring only to those who challenge her. After four years of criticism, online fury, abuse, threats of violence, and even book burnings, her faith in her own position is undimmed. “I believe absolutely that there is something dangerous about this movement, and it must be challenged.”

Yes, and? Jennifer O’Connell seems to have plenty of faith in her own position here. Are we not allowed to have firm opinions now? Do we have to be “I just don’t know” on all subjects?

And when it comes to trans ideology…we have a mountain of evidence, that grows by the minute, of the frenzied emotionalism and stark absence of critical thinking that characterize it. Trans ideology is a hot mess, so why are we under pressure to go all self-doubting on the subject? Why not tell the ideologues to do some self-doubting? Why are the trans boosters allowed to be as dogmatic as Savonarola while we are told to be hesitant and racked with doubt?

The “movement” to which she is referring is one in support of equal rights for trans people. 

Like hell it is. It’s a movement demanding special rights for trans people, bizarre unworkable unjust pseudo-rights. It’s a movement that orders women to accept men as women in all circumstances on demand and without hesitation or protest. That’s not “equal rights”; that’s demolition of women’s rights.

In 2019 and again in 2020, Rowling launched herself confidently into this fractious, emotive debate with a series of tweets that precipitated the onslaught she sees as a witch-hunt.

Sneer sneer. How dare she utter her opinion on the subject? Same way Jennifer O’Connell does; same way men who call themselves women do, except that she is far more thoughtful and polite.

In the podcast series – thoughtfully hosted by Megan Phelps-Roper, a recovering member of the homophobic Westboro Baptist Church and granddaughter of its former leader, the late Fred Phelps – Rowling attempts to explain why she chose to make this battle over the rights of an oppressed minority her life’s work.

Her life’s work? I think her life’s work mostly involves writing, and raising her kids, and sundry charities. Also, at this point, in what sense are trans people an oppressed minority?

She is candid about her experience of being in an abusive relationship and the toll that speaking out has taken. She describes how frightening it was to have her address published online. She makes a convincing case that backlashes against individual women online are meant as a warning to all women.

But what distinguishes her from other victims of online witch-hunts is that Rowling waded into this intentionally.

Jeezus. “The slut asked for it.” How dare she have her own (feminist) opinion. How dare she go public with her opinion. How dare she “wade into” a public debate. “The dangerous godless slutty whore asked for the punishment.”

Listening to her explain her position offers an insight into the way that the online world has eroded our ability to tease out complex issues, to explore nuance and to disagree.

Yo, look in the mirror, chum. Look at yourself berating a feminist woman for going public with her opinion. Look at yourself protecting men against these hulking bullying women. Look in the fucking mirror.

News boss was furious that staff were fact-checking Trump. Facts??! What have facts got to do with reporting the news?!!??

The top executive at Fox News was furious one of the network’s reporters was fact-checking Donald Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election, writing in a December 2020 email that it was “bad for business”.

We get it from all directions now. The Financial Times tells Joan Smith to put a lie in her review, Fox News tells staff not to fact-check Trump’s lies.

Suzanne Scott, the chief executive of Fox News, was responding in early December 2020 to an on-air fact-check by Eric Shawn, one of the network’s anchors. “This has to stop now,” she wrote to Meade Cooper, another Fox executive. “This is bad business and there clearly is a lack of understanding [sic] what is happening in these shows. The audience is furious and we are just feeding them material. Bad for business.”

The audience is furious. Does Scott understand the difference between fiction and news? Does she understand that the audience’s dislike of the plot of a movie fiction is not the same as the audience’s dislike of facts reported on the news? Does she get that the criteria are different?

The message is part of a tranche of internal communications obtained by the voting equipment company Dominion in its $1.6bn defamation lawsuit against Fox. Dominion displayed a copy of the message a court hearing last week as its lawyers argued that Fox knowingly aired false statements about Dominion because it was concerned about losing viewers to rival networks such as Newsmax and One America News (OAN). The Guardian obtained a copy of the message and the slideshow that was presented in court.

I look forward to Dominion’s mopping the floor with Fox News.

How the lies get in.

You want trans visibility? Here’s some trans visibility.

What does “act on them” mean? There is no “act on them.” It’s about rhetoric and belief. We’re not the ones constantly threatening violence.

More on this one, because it’s like a burr in my brain.

What is that?

The ACLU doesn’t talk like that about any other oppressed group. Nobody talks like that about any other oppressed group. It’s weird, it’s out of place, it’s infantilizing, it’s excessive, it’s slushy, it makes no kind of sense. Where did this come from? How did we get here?

Normally conversations among adults about justice and human rights talk about…justice and human rights. They don’t talk about loving and cherishing. It’s a massive category mistake to do so. Justice and rights have to be independent of “love” and “cherishing” because they’re abstract and general, not emotional and personal.

In fact this kind of glurge sounds more like evangelical Christianity than it does a secular civil liberties organization.

And on top of the mismatch with a properly adult civil liberties org, there’s the fact that it’s repulsive. Ick. Who wants the world at large to “love” and “cherish” us? That would be creepy. Loving and cherishing is for people who know each other, not for the 7 billion people on the planet.

Why are they doing this? I suppose one guess is that the “activism” has relied all along on hysteria about transphobia, and that nudges people who don’t think very well into condescending sentimental drool about loving and cherishing. You’d think trans people themselves would object to the condescension, wouldn’t you? But no, maybe you wouldn’t, since the whole thing is deeply narcissistic, so the more offers of universal cherishing the better.

CNN reporter:

What does “support” mean in this context? What kind of “support” is he calling members of Congress to “shore up”? Is it just compassion and friendship? Or is it obstruction of justice? Trump being Trump, it’s bound to be the second. He doesn’t give a fuck about friendship (and he wouldn’t know compassion if he tripped and fell into an Olympic-size pool of it). He’s calling legislators to try to bully them into helping him obstruct justice, which some will be only to happy to do.

Apparently former presidents are supposed to be entirely above the law. Who knew?

Mike Pence, who was Donald J. Trump’s vice president, defended his former running mate on Thursday night, describing Mr. Trump’s indictment in a hush-money case as “an outrage.”

“The unprecedented indictment of a former president of the United States on a campaign finance issue is an outrage,” Mr. Pence told the host Wolf Blitzer on CNN.

It is? Why? Do they become gods once elected?

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who is widely expected to challenge Donald J. Trump for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, called the indictment of Mr. Trump “un-American” and said that his state “will not assist in an extradition request” should one come from New York authorities.

It’s un-American? It’s un-American not to put a criminal ex-president above the law? It’s un-American to treat the laws as applying to everyone?

The ACLU really needs to stop letting Chase Strangio write their tweets.

Say it with us – there is one god and Mohammed is his prophet. Say it with us – it’s one nation under God. Say it with us – Jehovah is the most high. Say it with us – Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare.

When news reporting leaves out a lot of crucial facts…

Activist Shaneel Lal has become the first transgender person to win a New Zealander of the Year award.

The 22-year-old has been named Young New Zealander of the Year for their work in the rainbow community.

They were instrumental in the fight to ban conversion therapy and in the recent protest against anti-trans campaigner Posie Parker.

That is, the violent riot a week ago that endangered women’s rights campaigner Posie Parker and injured at least one of the women there to hear her.

There’s also the omitted fact that caution about puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones is not “conversion therapy.”

New York lawyer Lloyd Green on Trump’s bust:

The question now looms whether the nation will face Trump-incited violence as a result. The former president threatened “death and destruction” if charged. In a now infamous social media post targeting the Black district attorney Alvin Bragg, Trump depicted himself brandishing a baseball bat at the District Attorney, and called him as an “animal” and “degenerate psychopath”.

That’s where I had to pause reading in order to find the post and share it.

The drumbeat continues. Next month, Trump stands trial for defamation and sexual assault. He faces a civil suit brought in New York by E Jean Carroll. Unlike his purported relationship with Daniels, this case centers on rape and degradation.

Carroll contends that a quarter of a century ago Trump attacked her in the dressing room of a Manhattan department store. He parried that she was not his “type”. But at a recent deposition, he mistook her for Marla Maples, his second wife, raising questions about his credibility and mental acuity.

The Trump-Carroll square-off will also provide the country with another opportunity to revisit history. Her lawyers will probably play the infamous Access Hollywood tape. “When you’re a star, they let you do it,” Trump said on a hot mic. “You can do anything.”

If they don’t play it they’re crazy.

Separately, a New York judge has refused to delay a $250m civil fraud action commenced by the state against Trump, his three older children and the Trump Organization, the family business. The October 2023 trial date is “written in stone”, Judge Arthur Engoron said last week.

Maybe, just maybe, the Republicans should try to get a non-criminal to run for president next time. Just a thought.

Senator Rand Paul, the self-styled libertarian, calls for Bragg’s arrest. Marjorie Taylor Greene demands that George Soros, foreign-born and a Bragg-backer, be stripped of his US citizenship.

Law and order! No, wait. Special rules for our crook! Yeah, that’s it.

Jeezus, I missed this. Last week Trump posted a photo of himself with a baseball bat next to a head and shoulders photo of Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan DA.

Will this nightmare ever end?

The indictment is on.

Members of Congress reacted to news of former President Trump’s indictment by a Manhattan grand jury with a mixture of shock, outrage, fear, uncertainty and celebration.

It’s the first time in U.S. history a former president has been indicted — a shock to the 2024 election and a move likely to harden pro- and anti-Trump sentiments well beyond Washington.

You know, there’s a reason for that – most former presidents hadn’t committed multiple crimes, some of them in full public view. Mind you there have been some very iffy ones – Grant and Harding to name two, plus of course Nixon. But the florid array of Trump’s crimes, the many decades they have behind them, the accompanying fact that he did his best to steal an election – it all adds up to make him Top Crook.

Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), a close Trump ally, is already fundraising off the anger around the indictment.

• “THIS JUST IN: PRESIDENT TRUMP HAS BEEN INDICTED,” reads a text from his campaign, calling it “unfair on so many levels.”
• The text includes a link to a WinRed page that says Trump was indicted “for being a patriot.”

No, that’s not it.

New Zealand Greens co-leader and Minister for the Prevention of Family and Sexual Violence Marama Davidson is asked what she thinks of the violent “protests” at the Let Women Speak rally.

She says it very smugly, too, and concludes with “transphobia is not welcome here!”

So it’s ok for a man who claims to be a woman to assault a woman, because the man claims to be a woman? Violence from cis men is bad but violence from men who claim to be women is good? According to the Minister for the Prevention of Family and Sexual Violence? So, if a married man decides he’s a woman and his wife objects it’s fine if he knocks her about?

Davidson appears to be slightly drunk on her own superiority.

Alarm bell in the night.

Yes! So true! Except for the fact that it hasn’t happened and isn’t happening, so in fact you don’t and can’t know that your claimed outcome is what will happen, so in fact, you’re just blathering about your deranged fantasies.

Other than that, good sound reasoning!

Andrew Tettenborn in The Spectator last July:

Sex offences, violence and fraud have spiked, according to the latest crime figures. Meanwhile, the number of convictions remains staggeringly low: in England and Wales, more than 99 per cent of rapes reported to police do not end in a conviction.

And yet the police still have ample time to punish us for knowing that men are not women.

The College of Policing, the national standards body for police, has said that officers need to focus on cutting crime, take a common sense approach and ‘not get involved in debates on Twitter’. Police have been told to avoid recording trivial incidents and reduce the number of ‘non-crime hate incidents’ (NCHI). In short, this means anything said or done by anyone which the victim (or anyone else) saw as being motivated by hostility or prejudice based on race or a protected characteristic, even if it didn’t amount to a crime. Of course, this comes too late for the 120,000 people in the past five years who were recorded by police even though their behaviour did not meet the criminal threshold. An enhanced CRB check could still flag up exiting non-crime hate incidents, meaning that these people could find their hopes of obtaining sensitive employment jeopardised. 

It also comes too late for Harry Miller, a retired policeman. Back in 2019, someone complained that his tweets on gender recognition went too far; he was visited by police, who told him that although he had committed no offence, they had to ‘check your thinking’. Refreshingly bloody-minded, he sued. Just before Christmas last year, the Court of Appeal said the police guidance behind the practice was unlawful, as it was disproportionate and an undue fetter on freedom of expression.

Not to mention just plain crazy. Punishing people for thinking, saying, writing that men are not women is grotesque.

Shaneel Lal today:

Trans activist Shaneel Lal believes their Young New Zealander of the Year award may receive some online backlash, but said the win is a result of hard work, not to, “fill a diversity quota”.

Lal, 22, who was an instrumental figure in the fight to have conversion therapy banned in New Zealand, was celebrated at the 2023 New Zealander of the Year awards at Auckland’s Cordis Hotel on Thursday night.

Shaneel Lal writing in the NZ Herald five days ago:

Aucklanders and New Zealanders from many parts of the country showed up and showed out.

Keen-Minshull’s minute group of supporters were outnumbered by counter-protests who attended wearing the trans flag colours and carrying signs in support of trans people and condemning Keen-Minshull’s transphobia. Keen-Minshull left Albert Park without saying a single word.

Auckland – I cannot thank you enough. Yesterday, you made me feel like I belong. You made me feel like I can live as my true self in this city. You showed me that I do not need to go back into hiding.

The cops are doing what now?

Hey. How about a day of WOMEN visibility?

But no, don’t be stupid. Women are horrible. No one wants women being visible. Trans people are the only decent people…along with men of course.