Author: Ophelia Benson

Ok bro, don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

Northern Irish actor Gerard McCarthy has pulled out of the suicide awareness play Right Before I Go at London’s Soho Theatre, after Dame Maureen Lipman was announced as joining the cast for its World Suicide Prevention Day performance on September 10.

Mr McCarthy, best known for his role in BBC dramas The Fall and Call the Midwife, had been part of the production during its Edinburgh Festival Fringe run and was set to return for the London dates.

However, he said Ms Lipman’s repeatedly stated positions on the Israel-Palestine conflict made it impossible for him to remain.

Ah that’s it, is it. A woman and a Jew – just overwhelmed your ability to maintain, did she?

In a public statement issued over the weekend, the actor said he had privately raised his concerns before ultimately deciding to step away from the show entirely, describing the situation as regrettable but necessary.

Oh he privately raised his concerns, did he. Meaning he tried to get her kicked out. How very plucky of him.

They want to enshrine it in law. They’re really going with that.

The Green Party would give biological men a legal right to compete in women’s sports under proposals drawn up by its members.

The plans, which could become party policy within weeks, would “extend trans people’s rights” so they can compete in the categories “they feel most comfortable in”.

Which will make it impossible for women and girls to have fair sports.

The proposals have been submitted for debate at the Green Party conference in October, as an amendment to another motion calling for an end to “gender-based blanket bans” in sport.

In other words a return to the 19th century situation in which women couldn’t play team sports at all.

Under new government guidance published this year, public bodies must ensure sports teams are segregated based on biological sex, not gender identity.

…

Proponents say the changes are necessary to protect the integrity of women’s sports and keep female athletes safe.

However, the Green Party motion warns that sporting bans at “any level” have “serious consequences” for the physical and mental health of trans people. It also suggests that rules against biological men competing in female categories are rooted in “historical colonial and Eurocentric attitudes”, as well as “transmisogyny”.

What about the serious consequences for the mental and physical health of female people? Why don’t those matter?

In the long term, the amended motion urges the party to “legislate to protect and extend trans people’s rights to participate in sports in the gender categories they feel most comfortable in”.

But why should their most comfortable overrule women’s most comfortable? How is that fair or reasonable?

The original version of the motion – titled “Oppose Gender-Based Blanket Bans in Sport” – has been approved for debate at the Green Party conference in October. 

…

The synopsis states: “Sport allows people to stay physically and mentally healthy. Sporting bans at any level, especially attacking trans people, have serious consequences for gender diverse and global majority peoples’ mental and physical health. We need to stop blanket bans, and hold sporting bodies accountable.”

But what about girls’ and women’s mental and physical health? Why do the Greens keep catastrophizing about trans people’s health while completely ignoring the health of half of all human beings? Why do the loonies who push this crap think trans people are so much more important than women?

A further point about Jon Ronson v Graham Linehan:

Amazing to see BBC presenters rush to the defence of Ronson claiming we ‘know he’s right’?

He specifically objected to @Glinner talking about men in women’s sports and prisons.

I’ll leave your readers to decide if Ronson was right or not. pic.twitter.com/Y0dHzFu3cU

— Infinity Bomalians (@Terfin9000) September 1, 2026

The thing Ronson said. The “I couldn’t support you after you posted that picture of the sports team. That was incendiary and came over as just really unpleasant and harmful.”

Did it? Well, why? Unpleasant and harmful to whom?

That’s the joke, you see. That giant man dwarfing all the girls is the one who is unpleasant and harmful. Ronson wants us to think it’s unpleasant of Glinner to draw attention to this man being unpleasant and harmful to teenage girls, but hey, guess what, we think the problem is the man being unpleasant and harmful to teenage girls. Not the man pointing out the man being unpleasant, but the man being unpleasant.

I wonder if Ronson ever paused for a moment to notice that. He thinks the great big tall man is vulnerable to those mean teenage girls, but you’d think he’d have the basic sense to notice the other vulnerability in this story, and rethink his thinking.

It’s extremely odd, really, to look at that photo and think the vulnerability is with the giant man and not with the girls who don’t come up to his shoulders. (They’re teammates so it’s the girls on the other, unseen team who are vulnerable in this situation, but you get the idea.)

That man is not a sad vulnerable victim. You’d think Ronson would be able to see that.

CORRECTION

It turns out this was an exaggeration.

The willows were removed in October 2025 because they posed a safety hazard, a Kennedy Center spokesperson told Newsweek late Tuesday.

Kennedy Center Executive Director Matthew Floca testified in federal court earlier this year that most of the weeping willows that were part of the center’s original design had been “felled due to decay.”

Other reports have also pointed to the trees’ condition. Forbes reported Tuesday that the willows were planted in shallow beds over concrete decks, giving them relatively short lifespans and making them prone to decay and instability. The outlet reported that one tree had fallen during a storm and others were visibly dying before the October 2025 removal.

No, surrogacy is not a human right.

The UN special rapporteur on ­violence against women and girls has told an Australian conference on surrogacy that international law does not recognise a right to have a child “using whatever means”.

In a wide-ranging interview with The Australian, Reem Alsalem also called for an overhaul of the Sex Discrimination Act to protect the rights of biological women, and supported calls for an independent inquiry into the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency’s treatment of medicos who have expressed concern about pediatric gender medicine, and its relationships with transgender lobby groups.

Ms Alsalem said Australia was “absolutely” out of step with international evidence on medical treatment of gender-distressed children, and decried recent death threats allegedly made by a transgender activist against women’s advocates Sall Grover and Kirralie Smith.

Not to mention out of step with basic sanity. If a child insisted she was a cat should the child’s parents agree and dress her in a cat suit and give her kibbles for every meal?

The rapporteur was a keynote speaker at the conference titled “In the name of the Child: The Perils of Surrogate Motherhood for Mother and Baby”, hosted in Melbourne on Friday by the Association Representing Mothers Separated by Adoption.

The conference comes as the Australian Law Reform Commission undertakes a review of surrogacy laws, commissioned by the Albanese government in 2024, with findings due to be reported on September 11.

Will it find that there are no problems with surrogacy whatsoever? That’s my guess, sadly.

Ms Alsalem urged governments looking to reform surrogacy laws, including Australia’s, “not to rush into quick fixes”, and to ensure that the voices and rights of surrogate women, and children born of surrogacy, were properly taken into account.

Asked how she confronted often emotive arguments that her calls to abolish surrogacy would prevent infertile heterosexual couples and gay men from becoming parents, Ms Alsalem said: “International law doesn’t give you a right to form a family using whatever means.

“International law doesn’t support a view that just because you want to have a child with your genetic makeup, that you are entitled to have a child,” she said.

And it shouldn’t, can’t, mustn’t say otherwise, because such a law would imply that someone – some woman – has to be the “surrogate” for the couple who are entitled to have a child with their genetic makeup.

Ms Alsalem’s current visit is her first to Australia, but she has previously written letters in defence of Queensland child psychiatrist and gender medicine whistleblower Jillian Spencer, Victorian politician Moira Deeming in her defamation case against former opposition leader John Pesutto, and women’s-only app creator Sall Grover in her court battle against transgender activist Roxanne Tickle.

Touching on legal contests over women-only spaces such as Ms Grover’s, Ms Alsalem called for reform of Australia’s Sex Discrimination Act, amended by the Gillard government in 2013 to remove definitions of “man” and “woman”, while adding new protected attributes of sexual orientation, gender identity and intersex status.

“The Sex Discrimination Act should be revised to make it very clear that discrimination based on sex means biological sex,” Ms Alsalem said.

As opposed to pretend sex, make-believe sex, fake sex.

Ms Alsalem said Australia was “absolutely out of step” with international evidence urging caution in medical treatment of gender dysphoric children.

“Australians should be asking themselves why Australia is so slow after the wealth of recent evidence that has come to light,” she said. “We have had so much data on the harmful consequences of puberty blockers and other medical interventions, and countries that continue to be very, let’s say, trans inclusive, have rolled back the access of children to puberty blockers or medical interventions. The question is actually why hasn’t Australia followed course?”

Because Australia wants to be down with the kids? That’s the only reason I can think of. It’s just all so childish.

Now he’s trying to poison us.

Center for Food Safety, the Center for Biological Diversity, and Pesticide Action & Agroecology Network North America have sued the Trump administration over the registration of trifludimoxazin, a potent PFAS pesticide that breaks down into long-lived, PFAS byproducts.

PFAS, or perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are a class of chemicals characterized by ultra-strong carbon-fluorine bonds that are highly resistant to break down. Trifludimoxazin takes years to decades to break down. The groups’ lawsuit was filed Friday in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The Environmental Protection Agency has approved the use of trifludimoxazin on many crops, including corn, wheat, oats, soybeans, oranges, apples, peanuts and almonds, despite acknowledging the chemical’s potential harms to wildlife and human health.

“Trifludimoxazin is a likely human carcinogen that belongs to a family of weedkillers that also causes reproductive harm, birth defects and neurological deficits in animal studies,” said Bill Freese, science director at Center for Food Safety. “As if the health threats weren’t enough, this incredibly potent herbicide can drift to stunt crops and wild plants hundreds of yards from a sprayed field, while runoff threatens wetland plants. Potent biocides like this have no business on the American landscape.”

Whatever. When in doubt, go with the long-lived harmful pesticides.

The Australian reports:

Women’s rights advocate Sall Grover has opted to pull out of publicly addressing a rally in Sydney on Sunday after she and fellow campaigner Kirralie Smith allegedly received death threats from a trans rights activist.

Ms Grover has also issued a defamation concerns notice to a range of trans activist groups, having been described as a “racist transphobe” on flyers promoting a counter-protest challenging Sunday’s Women’s Rights Network event.

In a private social media message sent to Binary Australia spokeswoman Ms Smith, a trans activist identifying themselves only as “Riles” told her: “We are going to put a bullet through your fucking head for bringing men to (a transgender soccer player’s) game to intimidate her! 1 terf 1 bullet! You will suffer immense physical anguish for putting our side in harm’s way!”

Yes but never forget, they are the most fragile marginalized persecuted people on the planet, so when they make death threats it’s…well, understandable.

Another message from “Riles” said: “So happy you lost $100,000 but it’s not f..king enough we WILL ruin your life as much as humanly possible. We will never stop pursuing your suffering! And trans people are going f..king NOWHERE you subhuman filth! We will haunt you as long as you live! You will never be safe! Trans people are all over the world too, and thanks to the internet, also connected! We know what you look like in other words :) on f..king sight.”

The message also featured a photograph of Ms Grover, with the caption “1 terf 1 bullet”.

Ms Grover said she feared for her safety as a result of the threat, which has been reported to police by Ms Smith. “I’m not going to speak at the rally because I am not going to put myself or any woman in harm’s way when literally all we’re asking for is the government to give us back what we had, which is the accurate definition of woman in the sex discrimination act, and women-only spaces, and to stop punishing us for recognising reality,” she said.

Yes but you see women have cis privilege while men who call themselves women do not, so it turns out that women are oppressing men and not the other way around. Strange but true.

Well it totally makes sense if you think about it.

The sex doll trade is flourishing. A 2026 market analysis estimates that the global market was valued at US$6.6bn in 2025, with a projection that it will more than double, to US$13.4bn, by 2033. As the market booms, and involves increasingly lifelike facsimiles of women, does how these dolls get treated matter?

Notice something?

It’s so taken for granted that this is a guy thing that there’s no acknowledgement of it.

And when a sex doll with “bruises” and rain-matted hair is tucked into a suitcase and left on a roadside, should we be concerned?

Johannes Fuss, chair of forensic psychiatry and sex research at the University of Duisburg-Essen, tells the Guardian that “the disposability and desecration of the female form in these contexts cannot be viewed entirely in isolation from broader cultural hostilities toward women”. Working with researcher Jeanne C Desbuleux, Fuss has published papers on the link between the anthropomorphisation of sex dolls and gender-based violence.

The research remains inconclusive. “We currently lack robust longitudinal data to definitively prove whether such doll use is protective or, conversely, is a behavioural stepping stone that increases real-world offending risk. I think we urgently need research on this question as more and more technologies enter the market to simulate human sexuality,” Fuss says.

However, he is suspicious of their appeal. “To put it provocatively: it boils down to total availability, a youthful and attractive body, and zero emotional demand or dialogue.”

Zero dialogue. Even talking is considered superfluous and indeed onerous? It’s not 98% about the humping it’s entirely about the humping.

“From my conversations with professionals and police, there are definitely men with adult-like companion dolls who see that doll as a person. They might see their dolls as women,” Prof Kelly Richards, a criminologist at the Queensland University of Technology Centre for Justice says. “But do they see women as humans?

“This is going to sound really dark. But in a global context, where I believe gender equality has gone backwards, sex dolls are actually just the extreme end of that.”

Still, on the upside, she’s not going to expect you to wash the dishes.

The US head of state.

Here we go again, Trump ignoring and breaking all the rules in order to vandalize public land and put up a parking lot golf course.

The land in question does not belong to him. It’s not presidential land. It’s not his to destroy. But of course he’s doing it anyway, because he does whatever he wants.

The Trump administration cut down dozens of trees on a beloved Washington, D.C. golf course before they were officially given permission to begin renovating the golf course, according to a new report.

Trees across East Potomac Golf Links have been coming down for weeks, after President Donald Trump said in June that work on the historical public golf facility would begin Sept. 1, The Washington Post reported on Friday, Aug. 28.

As of Thursday, Aug. 27, the administration had yet to release any design plans, construction schedule or budget for the golf course, and officials haven’t said whether the park would be closing for any renovations, according to the Post.

The outlet reported that more than 60 trees across the park — home to many historic cherry trees and sycamores — had been cut down over the past several weeks, citing an informal count.

…

Trump initially shared his plans for the East Potomac Golf Links, which sits on federal land run by the National Park Service, on Truth Social on June 28. He planned to “build one of the Greatest Golf Courses anywhere in the World,” which would “host major golf tournaments,” he wrote at the time.

The president was spotted touring the course that same day, carrying plans for the redesigned golf course, which appeared to exclude Washington’s oldest grove of cherry trees and other popular recreation areas, the Post reported on June 30.

The trees, gifted from Japan, arrived in Washington in January 1910 and were planted in a remote section of what is now East Potomac Park.

And now they’re gone. Trump don’t want no stinkin’ trees on his golf course.

No more what? There never was any Mr. Nice Guy.

Someone Remind Trump that the 300 Spartans LOST to Persia pic.twitter.com/0pKUub6rCv

— Ryan Rozbiani (@RyanRozbiani) August 29, 2026

Sigh.

Destruction is his happy place.

More than a century ago, Japan gifted cherry trees to the United States as a symbol of friendship. Many people know the famous blooms around the Tidal Basin, but East Potomac Park is also home to a historic grove, including the oldest gifted trees that date back to 1910, now more than 115 years old.

The Trump administration is moving forward with a plan to redesign the historic East Potomac Golf Links into a championship-size course. That plan extends into the cherry grove and bike trail area.

More than 60 trees were removed in the last weeks as part of the work.

Originally a comment by Artymorty on That allegation was false.

Back in 1930s Germany, the concept of what would now be considered “transgender” was barely embryonic. People weren’t querying each others’ inner souls for gender markers; rather, there were strict sex-based rules around sexual behaviour and dress/appearance, and some people contravened them.

So the simple answer is, no, the Nazis didn’t round up “trans people” and send them to the death camps for being trans because that quasi-religion wasn’t even born yet.

Though it was incubating, and prototypical elements were emerging. There had even been, for a brief period, official “transvestite passes” (Transvestitenscheine) that exempted some individuals from public sex-based dress laws. So maybe there’s some nuance we can suss out regarding the Nazis’ attitues towards what we could charitably call proto-transgender. Really, the only proxy we can use is cross-dressing, because that’s really the only material component that overlaps between today’s spiritual “transgender” identitarianism and German Wiemar- and Nazi-era proto-trans stereotype-defying and gender-bending. Cross-dressing is a behaviour — a material act — whereas “transgender” is an identity. So they’re not exactly the same thing, but it’s about as close as possible for our pupose.

So did the Nazis explicitly single out cross-dressers to be sent to the death camps?

Again, the answer is: no, they didn’t.

Whether or not you were a cross-dresser was not a criterion in the Nazi camp categorization system. It was whether or not you were a male homosexual (or were accused of having any sexual relation with another man), whether or not you were a convicted criminal, or whether or not they considered you “asocial” — an amorphous, class-loaded catch-all category, basically miscellaneous low-lifes: prostitutes, vagrants, “gypsies”, addicts, the severely deformed or disabled…

The other categories — political opponents, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and of course, the Jews — aren’t particularly relevant to this specific query.

So, many cross-dressers, male and female, did end up in the death camps, but at least officially, the reasons were that they were gay men, that they had criminal convictions, or that they were deemed “asocial” low-lifes. (Interestingly, lesbian sex acts weren’t considered criminal, but butch lesbians were classified as asocials and sent to the camps anyway.)

But perhaps equally as many cross-dressers didn’t go to the camps. If you were an otherwise upstanding straight man who could keep your cross-dressing habit contained enough to pass it off as a bit of costume fun if the Nazis interrogated you about it, you were probably fine. And we know there was plenty of cross-dressing going on among the rank-and-file Nazis. (Wherever you find lots of men in uniforms, you find plenty of cross-dressers. They go hand-in-hand for reasons we still don’t quite understand.)

And we also know that many of today’s “transgender women” map onto that latter category: straight guys with kinks, often middle-class or higher, surprisingly frequently in uniformed jobs. By and large, the Caitlyn Jenners and Rachel Levines of the day would have been fine, because they would have simply chosen to curb their public cross-dressing, limiting use of their feminine wardrobes to the home, and perhaps to outings at private soirées and nightclub parties.

At night, the picture gets a bit messy, because 1930s Germany’s — especially Berlin’s — nightlife was a wild, intermingling mash-up: gays & straights of high and low class, kinky and vanilla, gender-bending and not, often all rubbing shoulders in the same clubs. (Berlin’s nightlife is actually still pretty much like that. Ask a Berliner where to find a gay nightclub and you might get a reply along the lines of, all nightclubs in Berlin are gay nightclubs!)

But when the Nazis took power and began raiding the clubs, the wealthy and powerful caught in attendance, cross-dressing or not, would be set free.

So, some people who would today be considered “transgender” were persecuted and ended up murdered in the camps, and other people who would today be considered “transgender” weren’t at risk under the Nazis at all.

And that says a lot about today’s “transgender” population: it’s so heterogeneous, filled with just as many privileged, comfortable people as vulnerable, marginalized ones, that it’s kind of a meaningless category, just as “misellaneous” as the Nazis’ own category of “asocial”.

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Harmful to whom?

There are categories of things we shouldn’t say, because they can hurt and because there’s no value to saying them. We shouldn’t go around telling people they’re ugly, for instance. The law doesn’t come into it, but basic sympathy with other people should.

This is not that.

It’s not, but it seems to look like it to a lot of people, which may be why the whole Just Don’t Say It thing has taken such a grip on people.

I think that at this point, this kind of reaction might not be because of any regard for the tender feelings of trans identified males, but that bringing up the “Gabrielle” Ludwigs and “Karen” Whites makes “allies” look bad. It breaks the illusion that they’re fighting for the underdog, and rubs their noses in the fact that what they’re doing hurts women. Looking at it from Artymorty’s “Tribal Politics” pesrpective, having already committed themselves to the belief that what they’re supporting is “good” and “progressive”, they have no alternative but to try to suppress the predicted, inevitable result of letting men into women’s spaces and facilities. Seen in this light ,”NO DEBATE” is as much about protecting the reputations of trans supporters as it is about protecting an allegedly “marginalized, vulnerable community.” Exactly how many “allies” who are heterosexual men who claim with a straight face (HA!) that “TRANS WOMEN ARE WOMEN!” would ever include trans identified males into their dating pools? Likely very few, yet they’re more than happy to force lesbians to do exactly this. It’s so easy to give away things that don’t belong to you, to be blasé about collateral damage that is unlikely to fall upon your own head. Heroism without sacrifice. Cookies without cavities. Slow clap all ’round.

(The UK is an interesting test case. They seem to be having a “Hang on a minute” moment in advance of other countries that have been hauled down the trail of trans-ideological capture, so what happens there matters. It might be a preview of Coming Attractions on this side of the Atlantic. Granted that politics in both the US and Canada are different enough from the UK (and each other) that we can’t expect any direct transplant between any of them, what happens there is informative and helpful, so observations are useful.)

What is the percentage of British union membership who are actually trans-identified? (What percentage of the membership are women?) There’s more than one kind of forced teaming in operation. The suppression of uncomfortable truths covers the asses of a lot more “allies” than it does of actual trans-identified people. In terms of numbers, it’s not just trans people themselves who are benefiting from the demonization and ostracism of the bearers of bad news, it is also self-righteous trans “allies”. I daresay there are more of the latter than the former. The bacon they are saving is their own. The misogynistic, not-so-rearguard actions of those like Brighton City Council, and the SNP against the Supreme Court ruling are political examples of the sunk cost fallacy, showing an inability to accept that their support for trans intrusion of women’s spaces was both wrong and wrongheaded, and is now, however they try to spin it, actually against the law. They cannot and will not accept that , in this case, they are indeed the Baddies.

Let’s rename Trump “Dumbbell McStupid”.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford answered President Donald Trump’s “Lake America” decree Saturday with a billboard-sized message on the Canadian shoreline — “Lake Ontario. Now and Always” — as Canadian leaders met the move with ridicule rather than outrage.

…

The name Lake Ontario comes from the Huron Indigenous people’s word “oniatarí:io,” which means “lake of shining waters.” The Canadian province of Ontario, founded in 1867, took its name from the lake.

Wendat Nation Grand Chief Pierre Picard, whose people historically lived from the St. Lawrence Valley to the Great Lakes and whose language gave Lake Ontario its name, called Trump’s move an attempt to erase Indigenous history.

Well, to be fair, he probably didn’t know about the indigenous history part, because he knows nothing, but of course if he had known he would have been all the more gleeful to shit on it.

Why climate matters:

The death toll from devastating floods near the border between Nepal and China has risen to nearly 800, with thousands missing following Wednesday’s disaster.

Rescue efforts are under way to locate more than 900 missing workers at hydropower projects in central Nepal. Authorities from Nepal and the Tibet region of China have put the total number of missing at just over 3,000, with some bodies washing up in neighbouring India.

A glacier collapse high in the Himalaya mountains in Nepal near the border with Tibet triggered Wednesday’s catastrophic flooding and landslides, which buried villages and towns along the Trishuli and Bhotekoshi river systems.

…

According to Nepal’s National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority, the death toll from the floods has risen to 781.

The Kathmandu Post reported that bodies are turning up far downstream and local morgues are running out of space to store others until they are identified.

…

As of Sunday morning, 2,498 people remain missing in Nepal. They include 589 foreigners and 127 Nepali citizens travelling with them, 45 personnel from Nepal’s army, 27 from Nepal’s police and 13 from the armed police force.

Reporting from Nepal, Al Jazeera’s Samer Allawi said Nepal’s disaster management authorities have evacuated thousands of people, including foreign nationals, with the help of the army and police.

In China’s Tibet region, authorities said on Sunday that 261 foreign nationals from 23 countries are missing. They include 104 from Nepal, 49 from neighbouring India, as well as 33 Latvians, 18 Americans, 15 Britons, six from Canada, six from Australia, three each from Russia, Malaysia and Germany, 10 from the Netherlands, New Zealand, Estonia, France and Ireland and one each from Finland, Lithuania, Portugal, Ukraine, Spain, Hungary and Kazakhstan.

…

Nepali journalist Adhikari accused world leaders of not prioritising the threats posed by the climate crisis. “This catastrophe is not Nepal’s fault. The country is paying the price for how world leaders have been dealing with climate change.”

“Nepal has had floods and disasters like earthquakes before, but I have never seen anything like what happened on Wednesday. Entire families have been swept away. People are devastated and have lost everything – their property, their security, their lifelines. They have no homes to return to in the flood-affected areas.”

Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.

Graham Linehan writes:

Jon Ronson and I were friends for 25 years…

On May 27, 2019, I was doing everything I could to hold my sanity and my marriage together, waiting for the first of my supposed friends to say something in my defence while trans activists online and in the press went after me. That day, I was the one defending Jon, against someone I thought was attacking us both. To my astonishment, Jon took the other person’s side instead. I asked him what was going on. This was the reply:

“I couldn’t support you after you posted that picture of the sports team. That was incendiary and came over as just really unpleasant and harmful. Ditto your publicising the prison story. I’m sorry Graham but I’ve thought about this a lot and that’s where I’ve come to.”

The sports team photo showed a 50-year-old male basketball player Gabrielle Ludwig competing against college teammates and opponents decades younger than him. The prison story was Karen White, a convicted double-rapist, who told the authorities he identified as a woman and was duly sent to a women’s prison, where he set about trying to double rape two more.

Note that Jon doesn’t say the photo was faked. He doesn’t say the prison story was wrong. Accuracy isn’t the issue. The issue is sharing information that makes Jon Ronson uncomfortable. Incendiary. Unpleasant. Harmful. To whom? Not to the girls on that court, and not to Karen White’s captive victims, the only people who actually mattered in either story.

It’s so familiar and so annoying. It’s Freethought Blogs in the person of one toadying man. Never mind the truth, never mind the harm, never mind the freedom of thought – just close your eyes and think of the trans woman sobbing into her pillow because YOU said she’s a man.

There are categories of things we shouldn’t say, because they can hurt and because there’s no value to saying them. We shouldn’t go around telling people they’re ugly, for instance. The law doesn’t come into it, but basic sympathy with other people should.

This is not that.

It’s not, but it seems to look like it to a lot of people, which may be why the whole Just Don’t Say It thing has taken such a grip on people.

This is not that because people being ugly has no effect on the population at large, so it does not need to be pointed out. Men pretending to be women has a cascade of effects on women, so it does need to be pointed out.

Furthermore, given the obvious aggression in men claiming to be women, it’s hard to believe that their feelings are so tender and vulnerable that telling them they’re men will crush them. They’re more like the sneering playground bully than they are like the sobbing child they’re tormenting.

Pro tip: you don’t get to change the wording to make your assertion retroactively not libelous. That’s not how it works. At all.

Had to reread this before I realized you're on her side. Really?

She DID do Holocaust revisionism. So. Yeah. Fuck you

— Rhymxr (18+) (@Rhymxr) August 29, 2026

The word was “denial”. Not “revisionism”; denial.

They accused her of holocaust denial, not revisionism.

And she didn’t do that either.

She challenged a claim that trans people were some of the first to be targeted be the Nazis. There is nothing that supports that claim.

Where’s the revisionism?

— Bring Back Sanity (@Bird_OnA_Wire) August 29, 2026

If somebody claims that Auschwitz was located in Times Square or Piccadilly Circus, we’re allowed to say no it wasn’t. Just fyi.

Prepare to keel over laughing.

Trump just posted this video featuring armed geese — all sporting what appears to be Trump-style hair. pic.twitter.com/JNjQuaesAw

— Orla Joelsen (@OJoelsen) August 29, 2026

The geese army! Be afraid! Be very afraid!

Oh this is perfect.

British provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos faces deportation after a career in the American far-right

British provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos – who built his career in America through controversial public speaking that appealed to the far right, including calls for aggressive immigration enforcement – now faces deportation from the United States.

Yiannopoulos was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement Thursday at a Louisiana airport after overstaying his visa, the Department of Homeland Security said.

The conservative figure is being held by ICE in Louisiana, where several ICE facilities have served as the final stop for thousands of migrants in President Donald Trump’s deportation push.

He’s being held by ICE. I can’t not laugh, cruel though it may be.

Born in England to British and Greek parents, Yiannopoulos came to the US, where he built a career as a conservative firebrand who leaned into controversy through his writing for the far-right website Breitbart News, speeches and online presence.

He was an outspoken supporter of Donald Trump during his presidential campaign in 2016 and gained fans who appreciated his complete abandonment of political correctness.

Abandonment is not the right word, since there’s no reason to think he’d ever embraced it in the first place. “Contempt for” would be a better fit.

Yiannopoulos entered the US legally on May 14, 2019, but “chose to overstay his welcome in violation of our nation’s laws,” the DHS said in a statement announcing his arrest on X.

A judge issued a final order of removal for Yiannopoulos on July 22, after he failed to appear at an immigration hearing, the agency said.

Yiannopoulos was arrested by ICE on Thursday at the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport in Kenner, Louisiana. DHS said he will remain in federal custody pending his removal.

…

After his arrest, far-right influencer and Trump ally Laura Loomer – who has bitterly feuded with Yiannopoulos – wrote in a post on X Friday that she had reported him to ICE and the FBI.

Internecine wars! Send more popcorn!

Yiannopoulos has frequently called for aggressive immigration enforcement in posts on his X account over the last year.

After Trump returned to the White House on a campaign to dramatically increase deportations of undocumented people, Yiannopoulos insisted the administration needed to make good on that promise.

“There is one concrete thing we must insist on this administration delivering,” Yiannopoulos said in a June 2025 X post. “It matters a lot more than debts measured in imaginary money. We have got to deport millions and millions and millions of people. Without that, nothing else matters.”

Be careful of what you wish for.