Author: Ophelia Benson

  • BBC attempts ontology

    What a display.

    Now plenty of people listening will say “Ah well look trans men and women can use unisex toilets or single cubicles” but many of them will not think that. They want the dignity of being confirmed in their sex.

    But that’s not dignity. Adults playing let’s pretend is not dignity. Adults playing let’s pretend at the expense of women is not dignity and it’s not fair or right or acceptable, either. Adults demanding that everybody else in the world play along with their fantasies is so emphatically not dignity it’s hard to know how to express it.

    Idiot man continues.

    Call it an adopted sex if you like but that is what they will think.

    But they will be wrong. They could insist on an adopted species, too, and they would be wrong about that also. People think a lot of things; there is no absolute rule that we have to endorse everything that people think.

    They don’t want separate, they want to be who they are.

    No, you buffoon, they want other people to pretend they are who they are not.

    How did this happen? It’s as if adults like this guy, a professional BBC employee, were insisting that we all have to agree with people who claim to be elephants or spiders or whales or rattlesnakes. It’s embarrassing.

  • Go back to headline school

    If even the Daily Mail can’t get it right…

    What a headline!

    One, men invading women’s organizations is not a “culture war”.

    Two, women resisting men’s invasion of women’s organizations is not “kicking” anyone.

    Three, men are not a “minority group” even if they call themselves women.

    Four, how is it not obvious that single-sex spaces=single-sex spaces and therefore men don’t belong in the ones for women?

    That’s a hell of a lot to get wrong in one little headline.

  • Rank amateur does what now?

    If it ain’t broke why fix it?

    In a bid to remake the country’s top-rated news program, Bari Weiss, the editor in chief of CBS News, on Thursday unveiled an overhaul of “60 Minutes,” replacing the show’s executive producer with a tech journalist and firing two of its on-air correspondents.

    It’s the country’s top-rated news program, so why change it? Why change it??

    Ms. Weiss named Nick Bilton, a former New York Times technology columnist and a filmmaker who has directed and produced documentaries for HBO and Netflix, as her pick to lead the 58-year-old Sunday show. Mr. Bilton, who has never worked in traditional broadcast news, will replace Tanya Simon, who had been at the show for more than three decades.

    CBS News also fired Cecilia Vega, the program’s first Latina correspondent, and Sharyn Alfonsi, whose segment on torture in Salvadoran prisons was pulled off the air abruptly last year by Ms. Weiss, who requested more reporting. It aired in full at a later date. Draggan Mihailovich, the executive editor of “60 Minutes,” was also fired, as was Matthew Polevoy, a senior producer.

    Ms. Weiss, an opinion journalist with no prior experience in television, has made major changes at CBS since being appointed last year by the tech scion David Ellison. She has named Tony Dokoupil to helm “CBS Evening News,” hired new on-air contributors and personally booked some guests for interviews, a departure from the industry norm.

    But the overhaul at “60 Minutes” is by far the largest gamble of Ms. Weiss’s tenure. The program remains appointment viewing for millions every Sunday night, and its viewership this season rose 9 percent from the year prior, according to Nielsen.

    So why change it?

    And why hire Bari Weiss to run it? Bari Weiss is basically a blogger – like me, except that I have no illusions that I should be running CBS News. You might as well fire the pilot mid-flight and tell Bari Weiss to fly the plane.

    Ms. Weiss’s handling of “60 Minutes” has led to internal turmoil. Her decision to hold Ms. Alfonsi’s segment set off a firestorm, though it eventually ran with additional comments from the Trump administration. This week, Ms. Alfonsi told The Times that CBS was no longer separating editorial independence from corporate interests.

    They’ll be eating our faces any minute now.

  • 2 Minutes

    Bari Weiss, yet again.

    “60 Minutes” correspondent Cecilia Vega said Thursday that she was fired and issued a blistering statement in which she accused CBS News of “censorship, both imposed and self-driven.”

    Vega, who joined the prestigious TV newsmagazine from ABC News in 2023, said her contract wasn’t up until March 2027. The network did not respond to a request for comment.

    Vega got the ax in a major shakeup at the long-running show. CBS News Editor in Chief Bari Weiss ousted the executive producer, Tanya Simon, and replaced her with Nick Bilton, a former New York Times tech columnist and Vanity Fair contributor.

    Sharyn Alfonsi, a veteran “60 Minutes” correspondent who clashed with Weiss over a segment on Donald Trump’s immigration policies, also exited after her contract was not renewed.

    Trump and his minions are now in charge of journalism.

    We are in deep shit.

  • Speaking of real life impact

    Union says what?

    Speaking of impact in the work place, what impact would it have on women to have men who pretend to be women in their spaces on the job? With no right to say get out?

  • Criticizing them is illegal

    Oh does it now.

    DOJ Tries to Unmask Reddit and X Users Who Criticized ICE

    The Justice Department is trying to obtain the names, addresses, financial data, and other personal information of Reddit and X users who criticize ICE’s violent immigration tactics.

    Bloomberg reported that U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia and former Fox News host Jeanine Pirro has subpoenaed the massive social media platforms for the information of two anonymous users who made negative comments toward ICE. They are now part of a criminal investigation, even as Pirro’s office has yet to alert them of the charges…

    This is a clear attempt at intimidation of dissent and muzzling free speech, and it isn’t the first time. In February, the Department of Homeland Security sent out dozens of subpoenas to Google, Reddit, Discord, and Meta (which owns Facebook and Instagram), demanding they divulge the personal information of users who have criticized or helped locate ICE agents.

    The Trump administration is paying close attention to every Reddit thread and Instagram comment that opposes its massively unpopular deportation units—and is trying to take legal action against them. This insecure authoritarianism is a real low, even for this administration, especially as Trump moves to pay his own supporters who actually committed real crimes from a $1.8 billion slush fund.

    Be careful out there.

  • Sophisticated argument

    How to be extra extra extra progressive.

    Dame Helen Mirren has been harassed in the street by a pro-Palestine activist calling her an “evil Zionist bitch”.

    The Daily Mail has the clip.

    The Telegraph continues:

    Footage on social media shows the Oscar-winning actress, 80, being accosted as she walked along the street in London with her husband, director Taylor Hackford.

    In the video, Dame Helen can be seen initially greeting the man with a smile and asking if he is OK as he approaches the couple while filming.

    Launching into an abusive tirade, the unknown stranger says: “And there is Helen Mirren the avowed Zionist. You said Israel should last forever because of the Holocaust. And she was very happy the Palestinians houses were gone.

    “You are an evil Zionist bitch. And you [Mr Hackford] as well, fuck you and all.”

    So enlightened.

  • In New Jersey

    Ok then we’ll just reroute all the planes to Oklahoma. That’ll learn ya!

    Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said late Tuesday he is “drawing up plans” to end the processing of international flights in left-leaning cities, pointing to protests outside an immigration detention center in New Jersey as rationale.

    Serves us right. They should cut off our water and electricity, too.

    Mullin’s comments follow weekend protests at Delaney Hall in Newark, where Sen. Andy Kim (D-N.J.) was pepper sprayed during an interaction with immigration agents.

    Well duh. What kind of last name is “Kim”? Gotta be from one of them Asian countries, amirite? He’s lucky they didn’t just shoot him.

    The secretary, appearing on Fox News, complained about protests on city streets outside the facility.

    “They’re barricading our employees from coming in and out of the facility. Then, why are we processing international flights into the airport there? And I, we are currently — which we’re not initiating yet — but we’re currently drawing up plans to say, listen, these sanctuary cities where the local radical-left Democrats aren’t allowing us to do our jobs and enforce federal laws, then we shouldn’t be processing international flights into their cities either,” he said.

    No foreign-type restaurants, either. Shut them all down for code violations.

    Critics said ending the processing of international flights at various airports would cause chaos at airports across the country, forcing airlines to cancel flights and disrupt travel for left- and right-leaning cities that depend on CBP processing at major hubs.

    Well they should have thought of that before they – excuse me, I have to take this call. Chat soon.

  • Trump’s retribution campaign

    The Justice Department continues to act like Trump’s personal hitman.

    The Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation into E. Jean Carroll, the 82-year-old former magazine writer who accused Donald J. Trump of sexual assault, according to two people with direct knowledge of the situation.

    The investigation centers on whether Ms. Carroll committed perjury in civil lawsuits against Mr. Trump, according to the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation. Ms. Carroll won a $5 million civil judgment against Mr. Trump that he had sexually abused and defamed her, which the president last November asked the Supreme Court to overturn. She also won a $83.3 million civil judgment against him in another defamation case.

    Note: the Justice Department is not supposed to handle the president’s personal legal matters. That’s not its job at all, and the JD is supposed to act independently, including acting in ways the president doesn’t like. Separation of powers.

    An inquiry into Ms. Carroll would represent the latest chapter in Mr. Trump’s retribution campaign, which has been carried out by Justice Department officials. A number of figures who brought criminal and civil cases against Mr. Trump have come under the department’s scrutiny, including James B. Comey, New York Attorney General Letitia James and other adversaries of the president.

    The Justice Department shouldn’t be doing any of that. It’s filthy.

    The investigation comes at a volatile moment in a Justice Department that appears to be increasingly controlled by Mr. Trump, who has faced little pushback from department leadership as he accelerates his campaign of retribution against those who accused, challenged or defied him in the past.

    Yes, and that’s all wrong.

  • Guest post: From a neurological perspective

    Originally a comment by Mark on The details of the case.

    Speaking from a neurological perspective, the fact that they have a low IQ makes them more, not less, likely to re-offend. Rehabilitation requires that the subject possess a degree of intelligence to understand that what they did was wrong, to be able to empathise and put themselves in another’s shoes, so to speak. Low IQ people have many problems with doing this – and they are notoriously known to have very poor impulse control.

    And it’s often not fixable. While IQ is often derided, it is a relatively useful measure of a specific type of intelligence, and neuroscientists and clinical neuropsychologists use it often. If they have a low IQ by the time they are 14 years of age, the odds are that it will remain low forever – especially if they remain in the same environment. A lot of it is set in stone by the time the child is 6 or 7 – poor early childhood nutrition, poor nutrition in-utero, low levels of mental stimuli or parent interaction, alcohol use by the mother while in-utero – all of that impacts IQ and a lot of that is irreversible.

    The “punishment” given to the offenders is appalling, especially as it completely ignores any sense of justice for the victim. The judge didn’t even try to balance the right of the juvenile offenders with the need (and it is a need) for the victim to feel a sense of closure, a sense of justice. It was entirely “oh those poor widdle boys” and absolutely NOTHING (as far as I can see in the reports I’ve read) about the suffering, humiliation, pain and trauma faced by the girls attacked.

    And does this judge really feel that these boys are going to learn any lesson by being let off the hook?

    It’s a horrific case and a horrific act of judicial incompetence and a lack of care on the part of the judge for the victim. I’m not saying we should treat 14 year olds as adults, but neither should we treat them as if they are 5. And I’m also sadly quite certain that these boys will offend again. It’s just a matter of time.

  • Trumpalism is not journalism

    The Guardian a month ago on the Bari Weiss regime at CBS:

    The veteran 60 Minutes correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi expressed concern about “the spread of corporate meddling and editorial fear” at CBS News and her uncertainty about whether she will keep her job after she pushed back on a directive to change her December segment on Venezuelans who were sent to the Cecot prison in El Salvador.

    Alfonsi spoke about the incident for the first time on Thursday evening after receiving the Ridenhour prize for courage at the National Press Club in Washington. Her comments come as the Trump administration has piled pressure on US media and follow the decision by the CBS News editor, Bari Weiss, to shelve the segment on the flagship news program.

    Alfonsi had alleged at the time that Weiss had “spiked” the story for political purposes, a significant accusation of journalistic impropriety. Weiss argued that the segment was delayed because it did not sufficiently include the perspective of the Trump administration.

    But the Trump administration doesn’t have a “perspective”. It has Trump, who has hatreds and rages and contempt and ignorance. Put them all together and they still don’t make a perspective, they just make chaos and disaster.

    Alfonsi was preceded in her remarks by Bill Owens, who resigned from his job as executive producer of 60 Minutes in April 2025, citing corporate interference. Owens also received a Ridenhour prize for courage.

    “I always said I’d follow Bill over a cliff, and apparently I did,” she said.

    We’re all following Bill over a cliff.

  • Tentacles

    60 Minutes has been trumpified.

    CBS News has not renewed the contract of Sharyn Alfonsi, the “60 Minutes” correspondent who clashed with Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss over a December report on a Salvadoran prison, according ​to an interview published on Wednesday in the New York Times.

    CBS pulled the ‌segment – about a mega-prison where the U.S. has sent hundreds of mostly Venezuelan migrants without trial – hours before it was due to air in the U.S., sparking accusations from inside “60 Minutes” and on Capitol Hill that the network ​was engaging in self-censorship under political pressure.

    …

    CBS is owned by Paramount Skydance. 

    …

    Skydance Media, run by David Ellison – the son of longtime supporter of President ​Donald Trump, Larry Ellison – ​acquired Paramount in August ⁠and installed Weiss in October as editor-in-chief. David Ellison helped secure regulatory approval for the deal which created Paramount Skydance, with the promise that the ​CBS network would reflect the “varied ideological perspectives” of American viewers.

    By which they mean the trumpy views.

  • They had done very well

    More on that judge:

    When three teenage boys were convicted over the rapes of two girls only two months apart, their young victims anticipated custodial sentences. Instead, they listened as Judge Nicholas Rowland praised the defendants’ behaviour during the trial.

    The judge told two 15-year-olds, who filmed the rapes in Fordingbridge, Hampshire, that they had “done very well” with the restrictions put in place throughout the trial, as he sentenced them to youth rehabilitation orders (YROs).

    Well after all, it was only a couple of girls. Do girls even have thoughts and feelings? Do girls even matter?

    Rowland said he wanted to “avoid criminalising these children unnecessarily”, telling the defendants: “I have to remember that you are not small adults.” 

    And obviously it’s not the slightest bit important to discourage male people from raping female people, because female people don’t matter in the first place. This is one reason it’s not at all necessary to punish male people for shoving their penises into women who are struggling to escape.

    It has emerged that Rowland, one of Britain’s most experienced criminal trial judges, was challenged by the government last year for an “unduly lenient” sentence in another violent sex case.

    Ellie Reeves, the solicitor-general, appealed against the sentence handed to Joshua Blachford, a restaurant manager, who admitted raping a colleague. Rowland told Blachford that the “numerous testimonials” from his friends and family “show a wholly different side to you” before jailing him for three years and nine months.

    It’s so sweet when men see the good side of other men. It would be terrible to let those men who have good sides, however small, suffer any serious consequences for merely raping some stupid bitch.

  • The details of the case

    The Spectator on the slap on the wrist for rapists:

    A gang of teenage traveller boys who filmed themselves raping lone schoolgirls on two occasions have been spared jail. It seems from Judge Nicholas Rowland’s remarks that ‘none of you need to go to prison today’ that he didn’t find this a difficult decision to make.

    The details of the case as reported make the judge’s choice incomprehensible. Two of the rapists, both 14 at the time, targeted a 15-year-old girl on Snapchat and lured her to an underpass where they filmed themselves laughing as they raped her. On one video one of the boys is heard saying ‘don’t film it mush’. Two months later the same two boys, joined by a 13-year old, gang-raped a 14-year-old schoolgirl, this time at knifepoint. They filmed that attack on their phones, goading one another to degrade their victim. The first victim attended the sentencing hearing. She read a poem which included the line ‘All I want to do is die, I no longer have fear for when that comes’.

    Yes yes yes but how are the boys doing? Are they ok? Are they feeling stressed at all?

    In the second victim’s statement, read in court, she said ‘I feel ashamed, insecure and uncomfortable in my own body…the person I was before the incident has completely gone and sometimes I feel like I am grieving the person I used to be’. The harm to the second girl was exacerbated by the rapists’ decision to share videos of her assault on social media, under the pretence it was consensual. 

    Yes, that would exacerbate it.

    One triumph the internet can claim is making hatred of female people more virulent and destructive than it’s ever been.

    Judge Rowland praised these rapists, remarking that ‘you have all done very well with the restrictions put in place throughout the trial’. He also remarked that, ‘I think of you as very young and none of you have been in any big trouble before’, as though this somehow makes their horrific crimes less serious. According to Rowland, one boy’s ADHD diagnosis and anxiety made him more susceptible to ‘peer pressure’, while the second boy was in the bottom 1 per cent in IQ for his age, and had also been diagnosed with ADHD and the third apparently had ‘low intellectual capacity’ and ‘a limited understanding of consent’. Having considered all this, and remarking that ‘I have to remember that you are not small adults. I have to think how likely you are to do serious things again and I need to make sure you do not do serious things again in the future’, Rowland decided that youth rehabilitation orders would be sufficient.

    They haven’t done it before so it’s ok that they’ve now done it twice?

    Does not compute.

  • No big deal

    Speaking of the fashion for treating female people like dirt…

    A girl who was raped by two teenage boys has told the BBC that a judge’s decision to spare them jail sentences was like a “rock straight in my face”.

    Speaking exclusively to Laura Kuenssberg, the girl, now 16, said: “What was the point in putting me through that?”

    The girl, who spoke anonymously alongside her family, said the judge’s decision “almost made it seem as if what the boys did was not OK, but it was OK in the eyes of the law because they were still children”.

    The attorney general is to review the youth rehabilitation order sentences given by Judge Nicholas Rowland, who had said on Thursday he wanted to avoid “criminalising” the “very young” boys.

    Hey. They are old enough to rape a girl. That is, in fact, a crime, and not a remote or abstract crime but a very physical, up close and personal, damaging to the victim crime. Can you imagine wanting to torture a baby to death? Rape should be like that – unimaginable.

    The attorney general is to review the youth rehabilitation order sentences given by Judge Nicholas Rowland, who had said on Thursday he wanted to avoid “criminalising” the “very young” boys.

    Bro, they criminalized themselves. And they’re not so very young that they didn’t know what rape is, or how to go about it, or were incapable of it. Also what about the girl?

    The two defendants, who are now 15, were also convicted of attacking a second victim, who was raped in a field in January 2025. Another boy, now 14, was also convicted for his involvement in the second attack.

    The boys filmed the rapes on their phones and later shared some of the footage online.

    But hey. We don’t want to make them unhappy, so let’s not send them to jail at all.

  • Deemed controversial

    If women say no they must be punished, and if they talk about being punished they must be silenced. Sorry, I don’t make the rules.

    Today, I was given a permanent ban of posting on my Facebook page,

    @Meta. The page can exist – apparently – but I am not allowed to post on it anymore. The page has been deemed controversial due to the Giggle v Tickle case and increased popularity of 25,000 new followers in a week. I don’t want to labor the irony of being banned on a social networking platform while fighting in court for the right to ban men from a woman only social networking platform, it is what it is. Frankly, I’d love to have the same right that you do, @Meta.

    Women are routinely punished for not accepting men as women. It doesn’t turn those men into women. Nothing will.

    Nothing will, but the fun of punishing women is forever.

  • The Office for Women and Skirty Men

    “Does the office for women stand with biological women? Or does this office also include men identifying as women?”

    “We stand with all women, Senator.”

    And by “all women” of course she means women and men who call themselves women.

    If you let men who call themselves women in then it’s no longer an office for women. It’s so simple, and so obvious, and so crucial, yet these buffoons dig in and cling to the Big Lie.

  • Plz give back racist map

    Of course it did.

    Alabama on Wednesday asked the Supreme Court to allow it to use a congressional map favoring Republicans in this year’s elections, despite a lower court’s ruling that the redistricting plan intentionally discriminates against Black people.

    Duh. The two go hand in hand. In the case of Trumpians the two are indistinguishable.

    Attorney General Steve Marshall told the court that the state did not intentionally discriminate against Black residents and should be allowed to hold elections this year under a map chosen by lawmakers, not judges.

    It was an accident! So let us keep doing it!

  • Moving fast and breaking things

    He wants us all dead.

    Key officials responsible for leading US research on infectious disease threats have been barred from speaking directly with the World Health Organization — effectively shutting some of them out of the global discussions on virus outbreaks, according to documents and multiple sources who spoke to CNN.

    The Trump administration issued the directive stopping individuals at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases from communicating with the WHO.

    The federal health subagency was led for decades by Dr. Anthony Fauci and oversaw developing treatments for public health emergencies including HIV/AIDs and Covid-19.

    What next? Disband all the fire departments? Convert all the hospitals to branches of McDonald’s? Set all the forests on fire?

    The restrictions hobble quick cooperation with global counterparts, multiple current and former health officials said. One staffer characterized it as unheard of during a US response to emerging public health emergencies.

    The more unheard of the better, as far as Trump is concerned. He likes to be Special.

    The directive is part of a broader Trump administration retreat from participation in global health forums — the US withdrew from WHO in January at President Donald Trump’s direction, a move that was widely criticized by public health officials — and as many US health agencies are operating with interim heads.

    Among the vacant positions are the director of the infectious disease agency; surgeon general; head of the Food and Drug Administration; deputy health secretary; and head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — a leadership vacuum that observers say is unprecedented.

    They like doing unprecedented things. They think it makes them look Special.

    Taken together, it’s an unprecedented moment for national health leadership, said Dr. Dan Jernigan, a former CDC official who resigned after Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. ousted Dr. Susan Monarez, the sole confirmed director of this administration, last August.

    “Not in my 31 years at CDC” has there been a moment like this, said Jernigan, noting that a slew of other top positions are also unfilled.

    Knowledge-envy. Trump and Robert Kennedy are ignorant fools with no medical expertise, so they want to get rid of all people who know more than they do. Public health is one place to start.

    The limited cooperation with the WHO is a vestige of residual Trump and Republican frustration for the way the organization handled the Covid-19 pandemic, said Jeremy Konyndyk, president of Refugees International and a former Obama and Biden administration State Department official.

    Chains of communication that previously existed but have now been wiped out would have alerted US health officials sooner to the unfolding Ebola crisis, Konyndyk said.

    “We have public health leadership in this country now that have written off most of the institutions with global health,” he said.

    At the same time, several of the on-the-ground medical organizations in the Democratic Republic of Congo and neighboring countries have been severely hampered. They were previously funded by the US Agency for International Development, a division of the State Department that was dismantled amid the sweeping cuts made by the Department of Government Efficiency last year.

    Musk’s revenge.

  • Speaking of offensive language

    From last August:

    An anti-transgender activist has lost her right to appeal an apprehended violence order taken out by a transgender woman, after “highly intimidatory”, “objectively harassing,” and “unnecessarily cruel” X posts.

    Content warning: This story may contain offensive language

    In December last year, regional NSW soccer player Stephanie Blanch was successfully granted the order against Kirralie Smith, who targeted Ms Blanch in multiple X posts that a district court judge described as a “sustained campaign of belittling, harassment and intimidation”.

    Intimidation? Really? Is it really truly possible for women to intimidate men that easily? Isn’t it usually the other way around?

    The posts included photos of Ms Blanch, and described her as the “bloke in the frock” who played for a women’s football team in Wingham on the NSW Mid North Coast coast. At the time of the posts, she was the only transgender athlete on that team.

    That is, he was the only man on that women’s team.

    This is why the compelled language is compelled, of course: it makes it so much easier to confuse everyone. Say “she” and “her” enough times and most of us lose track of which sex he actually is.

    Prior to the posts, seen by thousands, Ms Blanch did not know Ms Smith. The anti-trans rights activist believes transgender women should not participate in women’s sports.

    Manipulative language again. The whole con is pulled off because the manipulative language is allowed and in fact mandated, as witness this particular example itself. Ms Blanch is a man. Ms Smith is not anti-rights, she’s opposed to pseudo-rights that no one has in the first place. No, it is not a human right for adult men to force the rest of the world to call them women. Obviously men should not participate in women’s sports.

    The original judgment said that what Ms Smith had said about Ms Blanch, a person who is already marginalised by being the only transgender woman in the club, was “unnecessarily cruel, offensive, and harassing”.

    Rich, isn’t it? Man steals a position on a women’s football team and the judge claims he’s “marginalised” because he’s the only one. The warpings of the ideology are a sight to behold.

    The Binary Australia website posted multiple articles about Ms Blanch, one of which said the word woman was “[r]endered meaningless when a bloke in a frock is suddenly a woman, as we all know that a ‘woman’ is not a costume, false boobs or a drug to be taken”.

    Yes, and? What part of that is false? We’re supposed to think it’s mean, but what about the meanness of a man depriving a woman of a place on the football team?

    Doesn’t count. Doesn’t even register.