Thanks, Guardian. Even when talking about women’s safety, do be sure to include a man who pretends to be a woman, despite the fact that that kneecaps the whole issue.

Saoirse Ronan’s comment about women’s safety on The Graham Norton Show has gone viral after she said using a phone as a weapon is something “girls have to think about all the time”. Ronan later said the reaction has been “wild” and that the moment was “opening a conversation”.

Here, six women tell us what they think about the comments and how they feel about women’s safety.

Except it’s actually five women plus one man for the sake of inclooooooooosion. Which is like having one tiger in a … Read the rest

If the union won’t stand up for women, women will walk. Janice Turner in The Times:

[Lisa] Lockey, 51, is one of five Darlington nurses in dispute with their NHS trust over its policy of allowing a trans-identified male colleague to use female changing rooms. When the health secretary, Wes Streeting, heard they were suing for sexual harassment and sex discrimination he was “horrified” and offered to meet them. Last week they travelled to London where he heard their concerns, including those of a nurse who has PTSD after being sexually abused as a child.

This meeting incensed North. It was “deeply concerning”, he tweeted, “that Wes Streeting appears to be once again pandering to anti-trans bigotry”. Three

Originally a comment by tigger_the_wing on The rules of play.

From the Cass review and various whistleblowers, we can be pretty sure that the castrations are a punishment for the crime of being a little boy who displays all the behaviours associated with a high likelihood of becoming a gay man after puberty. As has been announced in the Westminster parliament, the Tavistock clinic, who were brought little gender-nonconforming children by their panicking homophobic parents, and egged on by the homophobic sociopaths of Mermaids and Stonewall, were openly ‘transing the gay away’.

My siblings and I, and our children, and my grandchildren, were allowed to play with whatever toys we wished. As the meme says, if the toy isn’t … Read the rest

Anne Applebaum on the “vermin” trope:

The word vermin, as a political term, dates from the 1930s and ’40s, when both fascists and communists liked to describe their political enemies as vermin, parasites, and blood infections, as well as insects, weeds, dirt, and animals. The term has been revived and reanimated, in an American presidential campaign, with Donald Trump’s description of his opponents as “radical-left thugs” who “live like vermin.”

This language isn’t merely ugly or repellent: These words belong to a particular tradition. Adolf Hitler used these kinds of terms often. In 1938, he praised his compatriots who had helped “cleanse Germany of all those parasites who drank at the well of the despair of the Fatherland and

Meanwhile, Twitter itself considers it violence or threats or harassment to say that trans women are men and that men don’t experience rape exactly the way women do because men are more physically powerful than women.

Oh surely not. Surely I exaggerate. Don’t I?

This morning I’m in receipt of an email from the Twitter censors telling me:

Your post was detected by our systems and has had its visibility limited for violating the X rules. Specifically:We have determined your post violated our rules against Hateful Conduct.You may not promote violence against, threaten, or harass other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease. Ophelia Benson@OpheliaBenson@fran_amery

Any man can declare himself to be a woman without restrictions or security checks.

And that doesn’t mean just call himself a woman in his own living room. It means forcing everyone else to call him a woman on pain of a 10,000 Euro fine.… Read the rest

By “vulnerable people” she does not mean women, or migrants, or refugees, or workers, or lesbians and gay men, or survivors of genocide, or people with physical handicaps, or people of color, or indigenous people, or homeless people, or addicts, or political prisoners…

I am so fucking mad. Sorry Mom. But I am. Where are these people coming from that they think politics is picking on vulnerable people rather than picking people up. Find another job. And everyone else who is appalled, speak up. Because otherwise this is what you get.

— Catherine McKenna (@cathmckenna) November 1, 2024

She means men who say they are women. … Read the rest

Originally a comment by Mosnae on More than just a parade.

I think it’s important to emphasize a distinction in meaning here – in this case, as in most, “LGBTQ+” does not mean (the set of all people referred to by some letter within the initialism), but rather (a fairly specific political movement which purports to represent that set). Of course, the whole movement feeds deeply on conflation and on this idea of a huge, united, sociopolitically monolithic “community,” even though this is not only absurd and self-contradictory given the alleged nature of the community, but also quite patronizing to the individuals it claims to defend, and blatantly in disagreement with reality: there are many “members of the LGBTQ+ … Read the rest

Worse by the hour.

Donald Trump said former Rep. Liz Cheney is a “war hawk” who should be fired upon, as he raged against one of his most prominent intra-party critics while campaigning Thursday night in Arizona.

“She’s a radical war hawk. Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, OK?” the former president said at a campaign event in Glendale with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson. “Let’s see how she feels about it, you know, when the guns are trained on her face.”

Hey, same to you, Captain Bonespurs.

Cheney responded to Trump’s comments overnight, saying: “This is how dictators destroy free nations.”

In a post on X, the former

Whether we like it or not.

Donald Trump took his frequent habit of describing himself as a “protector” of women further on Wednesday night in Wisconsin, when he declared he would protect them “whether the women like it or not” if he wins a second term in the White House.

“I said, ‘Well, I’m going to do it, whether the women like it or not,’” Trump said. “I’m going to protect them.”

Of course he did. That’s how he thinks of women. The best ones are hotties he wants to grab by the pussy and the worst ones tell us what a loathsome lump of flesh he is. Either way we’re not independent humans, we’re just things men get … Read the rest

Nothing is too good for the gender-special.

LGBTQ group ACON given $7 million to produce non-gendered language cancer campaign meant for Indigenous and migrant women

Who needs a “non-gendered language cancer campaign”? What’s the point of such a thing? To spare the tender feelings of the tiny minority of people who think they’re the sex they’re not? To spare those purported feelings by putting real women in danger? Real women who are indigenous or migrant and thus face language barriers? A super-special luxury cancer campaign crafted to obscure the language around cancers that happen to women, in order to make the gender-special feel cuddled and looked after and pampered. The hell with indigenous and migrant women, yeah? They’re just there … Read the rest

London planning bid to host World Pride 2030

Head of Pride in London, Christopher Joell-Deshields, said the gala would be more than “just a parade”, but would accommodate discussions on topics including LGBTQ+ inclusive education and banning so-called conversion therapy. London Mayor Sadiq Khan described the city as “a beacon of inclusiveness, acceptance and diversity”. He added that he was “hugely proud” that London would be in the mix to host the event.

Ok but why so much focus on LGBTQ+ and so little focus on, say, women?

Why not women? Why never women?

There’s never any answer.

… Read the rest

So I walked down the hill to drop my vote into the Voting drop box. I didn’t have to, I could have just dropped it into a mailbox, but I wanted to. It was raining a lot harder than I thought, though, so I got very soaked. After dropping, therefore, I walked a block down to KEXP to warm up and dry off.

KEXP is a few-years-old radio station on the edge of Seattle Center (and next to a bus stop). It has a huge barn-like open space with old couches and chairs and tables and (of course) a little coffee shop in one corner, and we’re all welcome to use it. It’s a very nice and useful public amenity, … Read the rest

Alona Ferber at Prospect bashes women who know that men are not women.

She starts with Imane Khelif’s punch to the head of Angela Carini and Carini’s forfeit of the match because she didn’t want to be killed.

The Russian-run International Boxing Association, stripped last year of its recognition by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), claimed that the 25-year-old, who had competed in women’s boxing for years, had been disqualified from the 2023 boxing world championships over a failed gender eligibility test. The IOC rejected this, saying of the bout with Carini, “Scientifically, this is not a man fighting a woman.”

On X, users speculated whether Khelif—who was born female and has never identified as either trans or intersex—was male

What do you mean, that is a completely normal healthy sun-tanned outdoorsy virile athletical face.

Look. At. Trump's Face. This is from his rally last night. My god. pic.twitter.com/hutYEyQbBI

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 30, 2024

… Read the rest

Whiny male union boss tells women to shut up and take it. The union he’s boss of, I’m told, is 75% women.

.@UNISONSteve has decided he wants a private space where he gets to choose who's allowed to see him. pic.twitter.com/vDbNsqtPet

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) October 30, 2024

.@UNISONSteve has decided he wants a private space where he gets to choose who's allowed to see him. pic.twitter.com/vDbNsqtPet

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) October 30, 2024

He gets to choose who can see him, but those stupid bad phobic women who don’t want men watching them in the locker room do not get to choose who can see them. Bitches.… Read the rest

Snowless in October.

Japan’s Mount Fuji remained snowless on Tuesday, marking the latest date that its slopes have been bare since records began 130 years ago, the country’s weather agency said. The volcano’s snowcap begins forming on 2 October on average, and last year snow was first detected there on 5 October.

But because of warm weather, this year no snowfall had yet been observed on Japan’s highest mountain, said Yutaka Katsuta, a forecaster at Kofu Local Meteorological Office.

…

Japan’s summer this year was the joint hottest on record – equalling the level seen in 2023 – as extreme heatwaves fuelled by climate change engulfed many parts of the globe.

If it’s any comfort, Mount Rainier is never … Read the rest

Get the labels right.

Fascism is a form of authoritarianism, but not all authoritarians are fascists. Fascists have a transformative political project: to create a homogeneous people devoted to a messianic leader and to mobilize society for the sake of violent racial conflict. By contrast, monarchs or technocratic authoritarians – think of military dictatorships in Latin America – can be perfectly self-effacing: Europe’s longest-lasting dictatorship during the 20th century was headed by a decidedly uncharismatic Portuguese economist, António Salazar. Fascists, on the other hand, base their legitimacy on popular acclamation: they celebrate mass rallies and create a spectacle of power.

So far Trump is filling the fascist bill without breaking a sweat.

So far so Trumpist, it would seem:

The Jackie Green tweet is from 2018 but it’s still worth noting.

Gender ideology is a boy not wanting to play with boy toys so he has to have surgery to correct a “birth defect”.

If you actually just listen to “trans people”, the whole game is exposed. pic.twitter.com/hvN996lsYf

— Sall Grover (@salltweets) October 28, 2024

So the punishment for playing with girly toys is castration?

Seems harsh.… Read the rest

What we can expect if he.

Priority numero uno is immigration, where Trump has promised to launch “the largest deportation program in history” and begin a promised legal war against birthright citizenship—the constitutional rule contained in the 14th Amendment that children of immigrants are automatic citizens if born in America.

Both of these are long-term projects. There will be a lengthy legal fight if Trump suddenly declares a constitutional guarantee no longer operable. There will be logistical and legal challenges with attempting to uproot millions of people out of their communities. The first shots in each of these fights, however, will likely come in the form of day-one orders.

But Trump has more urgent business, because he’s a convicted … Read the rest