Author: Ophelia Benson

  • Qu’ils mangent de la brioche

    First US City Could Run Out Of Water

    A coastal city in Texas with more than 300,000 residents is facing a severe water shortage and could become the first modern US city to run out of water.

    …Corpus Christi, a coastal city in Texas with more than 300,000 residents, is struggling with falling water supplies after years of drought, rising demand and delays in developing new sources of water.

    The city’s water shortage has been made worse by rapid industrial growth. Large petrochemical facilities in the region require huge amounts of water, adding pressure on supplies already affected by extreme weather conditions.

    A plastics chemical plant built in 2022 reportedly uses as much water for cooling every day as all residents of Corpus Christi combined.

    Hmm. Maybe not such a great choice to build the plastics chemical plant there, eh?

    Experts say the crisis highlights a growing global challenge as cities struggle to balance rising demand, climate change and shrinking water resources.

    Oh well. Just keep saying climate change is a hoax, and it will all work out somehow.

  • His jokes fell flat

    Trump persists in thinking he’s a funny guy.

    Trump bombed at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner Friday night. He knew he was bombing, too, and he even tried to meta-joke his way out of it.

    But no. Even the president’s jokes about his bad jokes fell flat, and he was widely ridiculed for the comedy routine afterward.

    To the surprise of no one. You need a sharp mind to be funny. Trump’s mind is about as sharp as a pile of wet laundry.

    “Nobody gives a damn about anybody else,” he said, and proceeded to count how many stories on The New York Times front page are about him.

    Hmmyeah. Trump griping about an absence of empathy is way too much irony in one spot.

    Trump also gave shoutouts to media executives whom he views as allies, namely Larry and David Ellison, who took control of Paramount last year and are now trying to buy Warner Bros. Discovery, CNN’s parent company. Paramount suffered a major setback earlier on Friday when it agreed to accept a months-long delay to the merger while legal challenges are resolved.

    Invoking the fact that Paramount owns CBS News, Trump said David Ellison is “going to make, I think, fantastic changes and keep some of the great stuff going.”

    Trump also made a convoluted joke about the controversial changes implemented by Ellison’s handpicked editor-in-chief of CBS News, Bari Weiss: “Under my administration, a once-feared and powerful regime that relentlessly attacked America has finally been toppled. Their former leaders have been removed, and they’re now being run by a gay dictator facing internal divisions. But I, for one, wish Bari Weiss all the best at CBS News. She’s a wonderful woman.”

    Toward the end of the speech, the president donned a red “Trump 2028” hat. 

    Ha ha. He’s so funny.

    The outgoing president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, Weijia Jiang, introduced Trump after discussing the importance of press freedom. Jiang drafted her remarks knowing the president would be sitting next to her and listening.

    Jiang said there is “an existential difference between criticizing the press and trying to undermine it. One is healthy, and it makes all of us better. The other is exactly what the founders hoped to prevent.”

    The CBS correspondent also addressed Trump directly: “When we ask questions, you push back. You give us answers, and we push back. You have always been a deal guy. Well, that’s the deal. And the First Amendment is a done deal. And that’s what we toast tonight.”

    He’ll still think they’re toasting him.

  • Inspiration

    Bolton News:

    Two Bolton community champions who have transformed the lives of hundreds of local people are set to be honoured at the Palace of Westminster later this month.

    Tunde Olasupo and Khadija Patel have been named among 28 recipients of the prestigious British Citizen Award (BCA), which recognises people making an outstanding contribution to communities across the UK.

    …

    Also being recognised is Khadija Patel, founder of KRIMMZ Girls Youth Club, whose work has empowered hundreds of young women across Bolton through sport and physical activity.

    Under that paragraph is a photo of Khadija Patel.

    We know they mean well, but this is an absolutely poisonous message to girls.

  • The wind wasn’t blowing

    Stick a fork in him, he’s done.

    Donald Trump against Sleepy Joe Biden. Nobody could watch it because the wind wasn’t blowing. Remember that?

    Nope.

  • No resolution

    Awww, they’re disappointed – how sad.

    Awwwwww, they’re disappointed; that’s so sad. Of course if they hadn’t cancelled an event organised by the Women’s Rights Network group then the WRN would have had no reason to file any papers, but awwwww anyway you poor shmucks.

    The west Belfast festival organisers posted a public statement on social media saying the Respect, Rights & Reality event, which was part of the Féile programme, had been withdrawn as it was “promoting campaigns against rights for the transgender community”.

    Liars. Of course it wasn’t.

    However, the Women’s Rights Network issued a statement saying they were “shocked and deeply disappointed” by the decision.

    Now JK Rowling has waded into the row, replying on X to the Women’s Rights Network that she “will help with legal costs”.

    Fuck around and find out, eh?

  • Miscellany Room 15

  • If am one, how know?

    Stella Creasy throws women overboard for the umpteenth time.

    Hur hur hur, so funny. She is one, but she also thinks (or pretends to think) men too can be women by the simple act of saying so.

    She doesn’t say the hallowed “trans women are women” in this particular tweet, but that of course is what she means by “trans rights”. That’s what they all mean, the legions of true believers. Men have a right to be women on their own say-so, and no one has a right to contradict them.

    And there’s also the ever-popular obfuscating “trans rights” declaration, as always without any specifics about what “trans rights” are. There is in fact no such thing as a “right” to force the world to agree that a man is a woman or a woman is a man. From that follows the rest. People who claim to be trans have no rights that entail forced agreement that they are what they are not. Theodore Upton has no right to force people to agree that he is a woman, because he is not a woman. Nobody has any right to force people to agree that “God” exists and that we can find his (definitely not her) instructions in this book here. Forcing people to agree that fictions are facts is not a right. It is, in fact, a violation of rights.

  • Great alternatives

    So Trump makes it very clear that he imposes tariffs not for some sort of credible economic reason but for his personal jollies. He imposes tariffs because he likes to.

    On the day the Supreme Court ruled against a broad swath of President Trump’s tariffs, he was visibly angry — and determined to enact more tariffs anyway.

    “Other alternatives will now be used to replace the ones that the court incorrectly rejected,” he said at a White House press briefing on Feb. 20. “We have alternatives, great alternatives.”

    Tariffs are fun, dammit! They’re a perk of the job, like riding around in the presidenty car and flying around in Air Force One and knocking down buildings.

    But regardless of the politics, the president is fond of tariffs — he regularly calls tariff his favorite word in stump speeches. Indeed, the president’s criticism of free trade deals such as NAFTA and willingness to entertain protectionist policies instead was part of the populist pitch that initially got him elected in 2016.

    Since then, he has shown that he likes the policy in part because it helps him strong-arm other countries into giving concessions on trade deals.

    That sentence could have ended at “other countries”. He likes bullying. He loves bullying. He loves bullying individuals, and getting to bully whole countries is his happy place. Bullies love their work.

  • Speaking directly

    Merched Cymru on Facebook:

    The Charity Commission has now confirmed it’s speaking directly to Amnesty UK’s trustees as part of its formal compliance case, moving well past the “internal review” stage Amnesty itself keeps citing. JK Rowling cuts straight through Amnesty’s own defence: if the report was withdrawn because of its “language,” why did Amnesty express the exact same beliefs, in the same language, months earlier in the report The Times uncovered?

    Beira’s Place staff have received threats and abuse since publication, and the service saw a 600% spike in traffic from people entirely outside its intended remit. This is the practical cost of being publicly branded “anti-rights” by a body with Amnesty’s reach, regardless of how quickly the report came down afterwards.

    Also, charities didn’t need to wait for a code of practice to start complying with a Supreme Court ruling that’s been settled law for over a year, as For Women Scotland make clear. The Charity Commission has now said that exactly, in writing, to the whole sector – which includes Amnesty.

    It’s almost as if trans ideology is all about taking away the rights women have fought for since always.

  • But what are they?

    Actual literal Members of Parliament talking this childish let’s pretend drivel.

    What are trans rights? Trans people have human rights; no one says otherwise. What rights are specific to trans people? Kindly spell them out so that we can see how ridiculous the claim is – and, more seriously, so that we can indeed “debate” whether or not they are rights, and why. If you think men have a right to take over women’s organizations and prizes and jobs and spaces by saying “I am a woman” then kindly explain why you think that, and how the hell you ever got elected to Parliament.

  • They’ve made a formal complaint

    Jolyon Maugham is again using other people’s money to bully women who defend women’s rights.

    We’ve made a formal complaint to the Charity Commission and the government, citing 46 examples of offensive transphobia

    Ahhh “offensive” – but offensive to whom, my dear chap? It’s not offensive to everyone. Are you quite sure it’s offensive to more than a handful of misinformed or deranged people?

    Content warning: transphobic hate

    According to Jolyon, that is. Other onlookers think the “hate” is coming more from Jolyon than from his targets.

    The anti-trans charity Sex Matters are spreading hate – so we’ve sent a formal complaint to the Charity Commission and raised our concerns with the government.

    Using social media and the rightwing press, Sex Matters, their staff, and their trustees keep pumping out hateful, dehumanising narratives about trans people. Charities should work in the public interest, and in return they benefit from tax breaks. But there’s nothing charitable about transphobia. 

    No they don’t. He’s just lying. He has a very distorted idea of what trans ideology is and an even more distorted idea of the views of people who reject trans ideology. It’s in no way “dehumanising” to say that men cannot be women. You know why? Because women are human and so are men, despite the fact that they are what they are and not something else.

    Our complaint includes 46 incidents of inappropriate and offensive conduct – which we’ve presented to the regulator. Taken together, we believe these amount to misconduct and mismanagement of the charity. This simply isn’t how charities should behave.

    We know from long and tedious experience that none of it is misconduct. We know that Maugham thinks non-adherence to trans dogma is wicked, but we also know that trans dogma is idiotic and not worth the attention of sane adults.

    We think Sex Matters are breaking charity law, going beyond anything that could be deemed charitable. They target individuals, offensively conflate trans people with predators and fetishists, and seem set on dehumanising an already vulnerable minority.

    Oops. What? They “seem” set on blah blah blah? Dude that’s just admitting that you’re making it all up. You can’t use the judicial system to punish people because they “seem” (according to you) to be doing blah blah blah. Pro tip: they don’t “seem” it to the rest of us. The rest of us=everyone minus about 50 irritable fools.

    We also found evidence of Sex Matters insinuating that trans people are dangerous predators and fetishists. In a 2024 speech, director of advocacy Helen Joyce said that trans women being allowed to use women’s communal changing rooms was “a state-sanctioned sex crime – voyeurism and indecent exposure”.

    Because it is. You can’t allow men to get naked in women’s changing rooms without its being a crime against women. See also: squaring the circle.

  • Widethpwead outwage

    How is this so mainstreamed? Why is Yahoo Sports on Team Men Can Be Women?

    Indiana Fever star Sophie Cunningham has decided to use her platform to speak out on a hot-button political issue, and predictably, it has sparked widespread outrage from fans.

    During a recent interview with ESPN, Cunningham spoke out against transgender women competing in women’s sport, eliciting quite a strong response from fans and media.

    And by “quite a strong response” this clumsy male writer means a disapproving response.

    During a recent interview with ESPN, Cunningham was asked about the “MAGA Barbie” nickname she has recently been given. While Cunningham says that label is a projection, given that she is a white girl from Missouri, she did go on to speak out on how to “protect women’s sports.”

    Why the scare-quotes, clumsy male writer? Why shouldn’t she go on to talk about protecting women’s sports? Do women just obviously not deserve to have women’s sports?

    Needless to say, this is a pretty strong stand from Cunningham, but she received a lot of criticism as a result.

    No actually it’s not needless to say. It’s also not needless to explain your ardent though inarticulate disapproval.

    His effort to explain is demonstrated by quoting a few stupid cliche-riddled jibes from random people and leaving it at that. Playground whispers for putative adults.

  • 46 examples

    A “campaign”…

    The Good Law Project (GLP) has started a campaign against Sex Matters, saying that it has identified “46 examples” of Sex Matters “spewing hate”, including “harassment and discrimination”, which it says “breaks charity law”. It says it has submitted a formal complaint to the Charity Commission.

    Or it could just go after them with hammers.

    Sex Matters was founded as a human-rights charity to create space for debate and understanding of laws and rights concerning sex and gender identity. We think that there are conflicts of rights and that it should be possible to talk about them openly and freely. We believe that this is how everyone’s rights can be protected, and institutions can be held to account.

    …

    GLP has not published its complaint or shared its 46 examples with us but it has published a selection of quotes and links on its website. When we looked at what it had identified as “inappropriate and offensive” conduct it was simply a set of examples of us pointing out the serious harms done by those promoting gender identity.

    They include a powerful and insightful speech given by Sex Matters’ director of advocacy, Helen Joyce, at the Genspect Bigger Picture conference in September 2024, where she argued that the new belief system based on gender self-ID has co-opted and corrupted the language of rights  and is harming women, children and vulnerable people, and breaking medical and scientific thinking.

    True, true, and true. Let’s hope the Charity Commission knows truth when it sees it.

  • Question, discuss, disagree

    It gets even worse.

  • Open conversation

    Ahhh yes good old free speech, the kind where we get to threaten to hit you on the head with a hammer 21 times, which makes you dead.

    STAND WITH HEATHER HERBERT

    STAND FOR OPEN CONVERSATION

    Yes, because it’s “conversation” to hope that a woman beaten to death with hammer blows to the head had “a very painful death”. I love conversations like that, don’t you?

    Meanwhile, of course, we’re forbidden to say that men are not women, and if we go ahead and say it, we risk being beaten to death with hammer blows to the head.

  • Civil servants face being sanctioned

    It’s like being in nursery school. “Now, Doreen, if Bobby likes to pretend to be a tiger it’s unkind to tell him he’s not a tiger.”

    Civil servants face being sanctioned if they fail to use the preferred name or gender of a transgender colleague, leaked Whitehall guidance has revealed.

    The guidance, labelled “official sensitive” and created by the Cabinet Office, said calling a colleague by the incorrect pronouns could lead to them being disciplined.

    Oh come on. In the Civil Service??? Isn’t it time to grow up now? The Civil Service is serious business, and adults pretending to be something they’re not and trying to force others to play along is not serious business. It’s utterly childish and it’s downright embarrassing to watch all these putative fellow adults trying to force others to play the silly game. You want grownups for grownup work!

    The document outlines how fellow civil servants should treat transgender colleagues at work and includes warnings that “deliberate dead naming or misgendering to deny, mock or invalidate” a trans person would be investigated as potential misconduct.

    But there is no “dead naming” or “misgendering” – there’s only pretending.

    The leaked guidance said that it should be established whether a civil servant intentionally called someone by their pre-transition name or referred to them by the incorrect gender because of “a neurodivergent condition or memory issue”.

    It doesn’t matter. Employers should not be mandating this kind of lying and games-playing. Everybody should grow up.

  • He would say legitimate

    And there’s always Maugham.

  • More than 20?

    Real question.

    Ann Widdecombe was hit 21 times.

  • A longtime critic

    No no no we must not have energy efficiency!!

    The Trump administration is dismantling a wide array of federal energy-efficiency programs at the same time that war in Iran is raising oil prices, climate change is fueling record heat that is driving up demand for air conditioning and new data centers are straining America’s electricity supply.

    Wtf for? Is it bad to have energy efficiency? Is it good to waste energy?

    Trump has been a longtime critic of energy conservation rules, saying they limit consumer choice and ruin appliances. Over the past year, the administration has proposed rescinding requirements that manufacturers make washing machines and other appliances that use less electricity and water. The government has relaxed fuel-economy rules for new cars and trucks and criticized state building codes meant to curb energy use. Mr. Trump’s domestic policy bill last year phased out tax breaks for homeowners who upgraded insulation or bought more efficient water heaters.

    I think Trump has Oppositional Defiance Disorder.

  • So much for respect and rights

    Speaking of rights for particular groups, it’s crucial to prevent women from having any such rights.

    JK Rowling has said she is willing to “help with legal costs” after an event organised by the Women’s Rights Network group was cancelled by Féile an Phobail.

    The west Belfast festival organisers posted a public statement on social media saying the Respect, Rights & Reality event, which was part of the Féile programme, had been withdrawn as it was “promoting campaigns against rights for the transgender community”.

    Of course it wasn’t doing that, but if it had been, what would that tell us about rights for the trannsgenner communninee? If some or all putative rights of the transgenner communninee are in conflict with women’s rights, is there some obvious reason women just have to put up with it?

    Yesterday, Féile issued a statement about the event, writing: “An event application was submitted to this year’s Féile programme by a group called the Women’s Rights Network.

    Féile an Phobail was unaware from the initial submission that this event would promote campaigns against rights for the transgender community.

    Féile an Phobail takes pride in standing up for those who are marginalised and attacked.

    Unless they’re women. If they’re women, obviously they have no right to have rights. We are very progressive.

    The Northern Ireland Women’s Rights Network is described as a cross-community volunteer organisation and on their website say they are dedicated to defending the “sex-based rights of women and girls through advocacy, education, and community engagement.”

    Not allowed. Sorry. (Not actually sorry.) Women and girls are the oppressors; men pretending to be women are the oppressed.

    A statement from the Women’s Rights Network said: “Women’s Rights Network Northern Ireland is shocked and deeply disappointed that Féile an Phobail has cancelled our event, Respect, Rights & Reality, after previously accepting it into this year’s programme.

    “Our event was a discussion on women’s sex-based rights. That was made clear to Féile when our application was submitted.

    “This decision follows an organised online campaign against the event. That campaign included misogynistic, abusive and, in our view, threatening rhetoric directed at women associated with it. No organisation that values free speech should allow intimidation to determine which voices are heard.”

    Unless the intimidation is coming from the trans communninny.

    “Through this event women have sought to discuss their own rights. Feile has chosen to silence the voices of the very group that makes up half the population. Women are not a fringe interest group. We are half the population.”

    I keep saying this. We’re half the population and we’re the half that gestates the whole. Without women: extinction.