Author: Ophelia Benson

  • No dessert for a whole week

    Just don’t forget, Trump is keeping track.

    The White House has developed something akin to a “naughty and nice” list of NATO countries, as the Trump administration looks for ways to punish allies who refused to back the Iran war.

    …

    Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth floated the broad idea in December. “Model allies that step up, like Israel, South Korea, Poland, increasingly Germany, the Baltics and others, will receive our special favor,” he said. “Allies that still fail to do their part for collective defense will face consequences.”

    It’s not collective defense though, is it. It’s Trump’s personal war, launched and continued without consulting purported allies. Trump doesn’t have any allies, Trump does what Trump feels like doing.

    The White House made its frustration with allies clear. “While the United States has always been there for our so-called allies, countries we protect with thousands of troops have not been there for us throughout Operation Epic Fury,” said White House spokesperson Anna Kelly, referring to the Pentagon’s name for the operation. “President Trump has made his thoughts on this unfair dynamic clear, and as he said, the United States will remember.”

    But nobody asked him to do any operation epic tantrum; it was all his idea.

    But there is little precedent for taking such steps to punish allies, and such notions already face push back on Capitol Hill.

    “It is not helpful when American leaders speak of our alliances with derision,” Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) said Tuesday before a hearing on U.S. forces in the Indo-Pacific region. “We must be clear about the numerous political, strategic and moral benefits that country receives from its alliances.”

    But without slavish obedience what use are those strategic and moral benefits?

  • Could anyone?

    Seen on social meeja just now:

    Whatever you think about her books, what J.K. Rowling is doing right now matters more.

    She’s one of the most successful authors alive. She could have stayed quiet, protected her empire, and avoided the mob.

    Instead, she chose to speak up for women for sex-based rights, for single-sex spaces, for safeguarding.

    It gave me pause. I had to think about it. Could she have?

    I’m not so sure. I don’t say that to challenge her courage, but to look more closely at the nature of the situation. I’m not sure she could have put up with it forever, for the simple reason that it’s intolerable. Sitting back and staying silent while purported adults talk the most ridiculous destructive nonsense adults have talked since about the 11th century is no picnic, let me tell you. It’s itchy. You want to scratch it. Trying to ignore it gets more difficult every day.

    I think she would probably say the same. It’s keeping shtum that would have been the torture, not slapping the challenge onto the table and refusing to budge.

  • A more compelling

    Alastair Campbell has seen the error of his ways at last!

    Kidding. Totally kidding.

    Fantastic. Three men chatting about…trans rights. Women? What are those? What good are they? Who cares?

  • The worst Alastair

    This went well.

    There are many many pointed references to the Iraq war and many many pointed suggestions that he invite For Women Scotland on his podcast and many many reminders of the disgusting things his daughter Grace said in that skin-crawling interview with a poisonous man who pretends to be a woman. So far he’s ignored all of it. Not a good man.

  • Et tu?

    This isn’t the Guardian or the BBC, it’s the Times. Why does even the Times do this?

    Trans doctor at heart of NHS gender row to work in Australia

    The transgender doctor who was at the centre of a legal dispute in Britain over the use of women’s spaces has been given permission to work in Australia.

    Beth Upton, 30, left NHS Fife after the A&E nurse Sandie Peggie took her to court over the latter’s suspension due to a heated exchange at Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy in 2023.

    Took HER to court – why do they do that?? The whole point is that he’s a he, so why does even the Times lie about it and confuse, trick, mislead readers? Why does even the Times obey the rules of this idiotic destructive women-hating ideology?

    Upton has now been registered as an emergency medic by the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency, which has allowed her to work under supervision at hospitals on the north coast of New South Wales.

    She was registered on April 9, and her sex was listed as female. It was not immediately known whether she had started work. 

    Yes, HIS sex was listed as female, which is a lie. Doctors shouldn’t be lying about their sex. The Times shouldn’t be helping doctors lie about their sex.

    The decision has outraged some women’s rights advocates in Australia. Rachael Wong, the chief executive of Women’s Forum Australia, said it was “deeply alarming” that the regulation agency had registered Upton as female.

    She added that Upton was “not only male; he is a male who has openly disregarded women’s boundaries, privacy and consent”.

    Which is true, and a matter of public record, so why is the Times lying about what sex he is?

    The regulation agency defines a female as someone whose “biological sex is that of a female” and whose gender identity or gender expression is that of a female.

    That’s deranged. Idenniny and expression have nothing to do with it. Fantasize and play let’s pretend all you like, but not on the job, especially when that job is being a doctor. Who the hell wants a deranged lying giant bully of a man for a doctor?

  • Guest post: Queering Mr S

    Originally a comment by iknklast at Miscellany Room.

    Well, it happened again. We didn’t walk out at intermission this time, but it was still difficult to watch yet another Shakespearean play being “queered”. I didn’t mind the same sex romance; it might not have been strictly Shakespearean, but it wasn’t offensive, either. The ‘transing’ wasn’t as obvious this time. The actors couldn’t act – they were either overacting or just saying their lines so fast you couldn’t catch them (unfortunately, the fool was one of those, so any humor in the lines was lost in ethereal nothingness).

    The worst, though, was the pre-show explanation of the celebration of the non-binary in Shakespeare. They seemed to think his cross-dressing characters were taking up his stance for trans-rights (privileges, as we know).

    The thing they never got is that Shakespeare understood the binary. He knew there were two separate sexes. He knew what roles were expected of each sex, and he knew that the altering of the roles could be used to create both dramatic situations and comedy. He used that to great effect. When the director and actors fail to understand that, and take the gender-bending, cross-dressing seriously, as a statement meant to speak to our contemporary delusions – excuse me, ‘knowledge’ – then all comedy is lost.

    It wasn’t just the characters rushing lines, or shouting in overacting, or simply phoning it in that made it lose so much of the comedy, though of course that played a role. It was the fact that the actors didn’t understand that Shakespeare, fully aware of male and female, was using a biological reality to create a comical situation where things were not quite as one would expect, and characters set up situations that they believe to be in their best interests but often backfire on them with highly amusing results.

    And I will never, ever forgive the actor who didn’t do a good job delivering the Seven Ages of Man monologue. That is totally unforgivable, and if there was a god, I am sure she would receive eternal punishment for such a transgression.

  • Speaking of being rebuffed…

    Speaking of JKR – she’s just handed Alastair Campbell his head, after he tried to bully her into going on his podddkassst.

    …I’m at a loss to understand why you’re uninterested in interviewing @ForWomenScot, who secured the Supreme Court victory and are therefore THE leading voices on this issue. But perhaps your charming daughter has adequately represented the entire Campbell family’s view, by describing them as ‘ugly’ women, with whom she wouldn’t ‘want to be in a room’?

    Ouch. He needs to put some gasoline on that burn.

  • a white, cis woman from the UK

    Colin Wright tells us:

    This new academic paper claims that J.K. Rowling has essentially become Voldemort via her “celebrified transphobia,” which is apparently the authors’ term for Rowling publicly acknowledging basic biology.

    It argues that the “Wizarding World should be considered a cultural field” whose defining principle is “trans/queer inclusivity,” and says Rowling’s views have “significantly depleted her once-elite status.”

    This is an academic paper? It’s not a nerdy hobby for nerdy hobbyists but an actual paper in an academic field?

    It says Harry Potter has been read as “resisting binary gendering” and presenting gender as “varied, easily shifting, exploratory, and ‘slippery,’” with the Wizarding World offering trans and queer fans “identification and community” and “a ‘place of belonging.’”

    So Rowling became the moral equivalent of her own villain because some readers projected gender ideology onto the books, then felt shocked when the author turned out to believe sex is real.

    And in case the paper was not absurd enough already, its conclusion declares: “You’re a muggle, Joanne.”

    That’s Ms Rowling to you pathetic goons.

    Ooooh a prestigious global celebrity – what a very academic and scholarly observation.

    There are ways academics could educate us about JKR and/or her work, but this isn’t one of them.

  • A textbook narcissist

    I can’t help enjoying this from JKR.

    This is a man who desires nothing more than to be admired, whose entire shtick revolves around presenting himself as a hero worthy of envy and emulation (lest we forget, he ‘identifies with Gandhi and Martin Luther King’). To people like Maugham, any perceived diminution of what they believe to be their exalted status feels like a mortal attack, which is why every loss must be spun as a win, and black must be made to be white if the facts threaten his self-image.

    He’s just the latest in a long line of people on social media who think they’re dealing me a fatal blow by telling me I’ve lost popularity, that my legacy is tarnished or that former fans hate me. None of these people appear to grasped yet that I’m completely indifferent to being disliked by people I’ve never met, especially those I do not respect because of their online behaviour or what I believe to be their irrational and illiberal views.

    Maugham is a textbook narcissist who can’t believe that everyone else doesn’t live life with an unceasing thirst for validation from complete strangers. In spite of the fact that we’ve never met, and that as the years have rolled by I’ve been very open about the fact that I find his public behaviour increasingly bizarre, he seems to genuinely believe that the loss of his approval will cause me anguish. In reality, it’s a welcome source of ongoing entertainment, so long may he continue.

    The approval of Maugham is not a desirable goal.

  • All seasoned investigators

    In other (but related) FBI news…

    A group of FBI agents is suing FBI Director Kash Patel, Attorney General Pam Bondi, the FBI and the Justice Department after they were terminated over their work on the investigation into Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

    The three former agents — Jamie Garman, Blaire Toleman and Michelle Ball — were all seasoned investigators who primarily handled public corruption investigations and were assigned to special counsel Jack Smith’s team.

    The lawsuit, filed in the D.C. U.S. District Court, names Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel as defendants. It is the second such lawsuit filed this month against the Justice Department by former FBI agents who were terminated over their work on the 2020 election probe, code named “Arctic Frost.”

    They were doing their damn job. What were they supposed to do, say no?

    Although there are only three named plaintiffs in the latest case, the lawsuit also represents a proposed class of other similarly situated former agents. 

    It estimates there are currently at least 50 former agents who were terminated in a similar way, and it says that number is expected to grow.

    So Team Trump has been lavish in firing trained agents. How expensive.

    “Defendants have fired more than 50 FBI employees on the basis of their perceived political affiliation, without providing them any modicum of due process, and while disparaging their reputations and service in public statements around the time of the firings,” the lawsuit says.

    The proposed class represents a group of employees that goes beyond just those who were fired for their work on Smith’s investigations into President Trump. It also includes others who were fired for different alleged political reasons that run the gamut from being wrongfully perceived to support the Black Lives Matter movement and displaying a LGBTQ pride flag, to having friendships with disfavored employees, being targeted by far-right media personalities and having internal messages flagged by an artificial intelligence review. 

    A number of former FBI agents who fit into some of the categories named in the lawsuit have already filed separate complaints against the department over their termination, including a handful of former agents who knelt during racial justice protests in 2020, in an effort to fend off potential violence after the death of George Floyd.

    Never you mind about effort to fend off violence, punish them anyway!

    Return of the gang that couldn’t shoot straight.

  • Episodes and absences

    Who you callin a drunk?

    FBI director Kash Patel has sued The Atlantic and reporter Sarah Fitzpatrick over a story that alleged Patel has “alarmed colleagues with episodes of excessive drinking and unexplained absences.”

    The defamation suit, filed Monday morning in US District Court in the District of Columbia, seeks $250 million in damages.

    The Atlantic says nuh-uh.

    We can be pretty confident that the Atlantic didn’t just wave the story through without making sure it was safe.

    The defamation suit says statements in Fitzpatrick’s article “falsely assert” that Patel “is a habitual drunk, unable to perform the duties of his office, is a threat to public safety, is vulnerable to foreign coercion, has violated DOJ ethics rules, is unreachable in emergencies, has required the deployment of ‘breaching equipment’ to extract him from locked rooms, allows alcohol to influence his public statements about criminal investigations, and behaves erratically in a manner that compromises national security.”

    And now lots more people know that: far more people than those who read the Atlantic piece.

    Fitzpatrick wrote that she interviewed “more than two dozen people” about Patel’s conduct, “including current and former FBI officials, staff at law-enforcement and intelligence agencies, hospitality-industry workers, members of Congress, political operatives, lobbyists, and former advisers.”

    The sources were known to Fitzpatrick but were granted anonymity “to discuss sensitive information and private conversations.” She wrote that they “described Patel’s tenure as a management failure and his personal behavior as a national-security vulnerability.”

    Other than that he’s a gem.

  • Jolyon pitching a fit again

    Jolyon Maugham is calling on the troops to…tell the government that men can be women.

    Force the government to rip up the EHRC’s transphobic guidance

    It’s been a year since the Supreme Court’s decision that accelerated the rollback of trans rights in the UK. It’s been a difficult year, but it’s also been a year of coming together and fighting back.

    Remind us what this evil ruling was?

    That women are women, and men are not women.

    And it’s working. Our people power just forced the government to admit the EHRC’s transphobic draft guidance got it wrong, and they’ve had to send it back to the drawing board.

    Got it wrong? So men are women?

    But the fight is far from over. The government plan to bring an updated version back to parliament in May. So we need to act – fast.

    We have less than a month to put pressure on this government and make sure each and every MP is holding Bridget Phillipson to account. We need to make sure this new draft is workable, inclusive and fair. 

    That is, inclusive of men in the category “women” and fair to men at the expense of women.

  • Just like he do

    Jesus wants what Trump wants! It’s been scientifically shown!

  • A fixated loon

    Jolyon says he and Jo used to be friends.

    Do we believe him?

    Jo doesn’t, and she seems like a pretty solid source.

  • Wait WHO is the pathetic troll?

    This guy is an actual working journalist. Hard to believe.

    The full image:

  • Part 2

    Because a piece is missing. What Foxkiller said to invoke JKR’s brisk statement that she’s never met him and they’re not friends.

  • Fox returns

    Oh good, a bit of comic relief – Jolyon Maugham boasting of his former friendship with JK Rowling, confident that she would never dare tell the world they were never friends.

    Oops.

  • And yet, one year on

    Sex Matters:

    On 16th April 2025, the UK Supreme Court delivered its landmark judgment: the terms “man” and “woman” in the Equality Act 2010 refer to biological sex, and they always have. 

    And yet, one year on, that clarity has not translated into action. Public bodies, regulators, employers and charities that were expected to review and update their policies continue to delay, avoid or outright resist change. Others are removing services for women and girls altogether. 

    One year later, a new booklet from Sex Matters, asks a simple but urgent question:
    If the law is settled, why are so many institutions still failing to follow it?

    Some wild guesses: Because they want to. Because they can get away with it. Because trans ideology is inseparable from trans bullying and trans never shut upping.

    Through case studies and testimony, One year later shows how this failure is harming women and girls in:

    • workplaces, where employees are not being provided with adequate facilities and face disciplinary action for raising concerns
    • healthcare, where the NHS is continuing to operate based on gender self-ID
    • local services, including leisure centres, refuges, and social care, which are not respecting the law
    • sport, where a two-tier system in some sports protects elite athletes but leaves most women competing against trans–identifying men
    • charities that are still wedded to the idea that “inclusion” means ignoring women’s rights 
    • criminal justice and safeguarding systems, where accurate data and risk assessment depend on clarity about sex.

    So…everything, pretty much.

  • From absurd assertions

    From an American Atheists mailing:

    On Monday, Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission held its final hearing. Chairman and Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick promptly summarized their findings: “There is no such thing as ‘separation of church and state’ in the Constitution. For too long, the anti-God Left has used this phrase to suppress people of religion in our country.” 

    That result was never in doubt. Patrick’s been saying it since at least 2013. So, it’s hardly surprising that a cherry-picked group, led by a guy who believes God wrote the Constitution, held a series of meetings at a Bible museum, excluded alternative viewpoints, and arrived exactly where they started.

    Last year, American Atheists warned the Commission its deliberate exclusion of minority and nonreligious perspectives would “fatally undermine” any semblance of objectivity. We were right.  

    The final hearing was filled with attacks on nonreligious Americans, with commissioners calling church-state separation “the biggest lie that’s been told in America since our founding” and warning against the rise of religious Nones because “the secular movement attacks all of us” and “secularists” are to blame for undermining the “fact” that “at the heart of American liberty and religious liberty is faith in the God of the Bible.” 

    That’s how the project advances from absurd assertions to institutional authority. 

    Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas took it even further, arguing in a speech this week that the founding principle of the United States is that “all rights come from God, not government.” Because “Progressivism” does not agree, he said its proponents (whom he compared to Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, and Mao) represent an existential threat that is “incompatible with a constitution premised on the transcendent origin of our rights” and “cannot coexist.” 

    All very well but how does he know which God? Who is this “God” and how does Clarence Thomas or anyone else know it’s the right one and not an imposter? If all rights come from God, how do they get to us?

    They get to us via people who say they come from God. But how do we know they’re telling the truth? How do we know they know? How do they know they know? How does anyone know any of this?

    The answer of course is they don’t. No one does. There is no unbroken chain of communication back to the writing of The Bible such that we can check the credentials of the people who wrote it, or, if you like, copied it from God’s dictation.

    All there is is a long line of human assertion. Somebody somewhere said it, therefore it’s true. Not very convincing, is it.

    It’s circular reasoning, is what it is.

    It’s in the Bible therefore it’s true.

    But how do you know?

    Because it’s in the Bible.

    So?

    It’s in the Bible therefore it’s true.

  • All the facts; none of the manipulative metaphors

    Newspaper gossip about snotty daughter of snotty father:

    JK Rowling has hit back at the daughter of ex-Labour spin doctor Alistair Campbell after she branded a group of women’s rights campaigners “ugly”. 

    JKR didn’t hit back. She replied or responded or disputed, which is not the same as punching. I do wish UK journalism would stop using this metaphor, because it’s highly tendentious, aka damaging. Journalism should be accurate above all, and it’s not accurate to label verbal disagreements as physical violence.

    A clip from the podcast shows Campbell and a guest calling the For Women Scotland members “freaks” and repeatedly branding them “ugly” while also criticising their hair and clothes. She said they were “not aspirational in any way” and [she] “didn’t want to be in a room with them”.

    And along with not using metaphors of physical violence in reporting verbal disagreement, journalism should provide the relevant facts. Saying “a guest” when you mean a man who pretends to be a woman is a stark failure (or refusal) to provide all the relevant facts. That guy who took such pleasure in calling women UGLEEEE is not just some guest, he’s a man cosplaying a woman. That’s an important part of this repulsive story.

    Campbell’s views were also echoed by her father, who was one of the architects of New Labour. On his and Rory Stewart’s The Rest is Politics podcast, he complained that the Supreme Court ruling did not give “clarity” and also moaned about the images of “lots of women popping champagne corks, pictures of JK Rowling smoking a celebratory cigar”.

    Uppity. There’s no other word for it. Women have become so uppity it’s all men can do to get their insults into the media.

    He also suggested the toxic nature of the debate was one sided, ignoring the abuse dished out by trans activists. For Women Scotland have challenged Campbell and Stewart to invite them on their podcast, but said on Saturday they were “still waiting” for them to “take up the offer and tell us we are are ‘toxic’ for the crime of being happy.”

    I hope we can make it hot for them. Take up the offer, dudes. You’re so clever, you’re bound to emerge smelling like roses.