Julie Bindel points out a few facts about JK Rowling for the benefit of Nick Hilton:

So when I read podcast producer Nick Hilton’s ignorant and vitriolic attack on J.K. Rowling in the New Statesman – the magazine of choice for champagne-swigging socialists – I was furious.

Hilton’s article, published earlier this week, is as bizarre as it is defamatory. It labels the author ‘Britain’s nastiest novelist’, attacks her most recent books and even finds time to bemoan ‘child abuse, murder and torture’ in the beloved Harry Potter series.

…

While Hilton has since claimed he was writing only about her books, it is very clear he was using them as a means of launching a thinly-veiled sexist rant

One problem with being a Donald Trump is that you’re a Donald Trump. It means a lot of people will avoid you, not necessarily for political reasons but because you’re a Donald Trump.

Donald Trump lost three of his lawyers in one day when attorney Joe Tacopina filed a declaration requesting the withdrawal of his firm’s representation of the former president in multiple lawsuits.

…

Tacopina withdrew his firm’s legal services from the hush money case only two months before the trial was set to start, at the end of March. Tacopina also requested to withdraw his firm’s legal services from E. Jean Carroll‘s civil defamation and battery case against Trump, which awarded the former Elle columnist $5

Ooooh that’s a tough one, we’ll get back to you in 20 years or so when we have the data.

In a paper published today in BMC Psychology, researchers recommend that "until there is direct and consistent scientific evidence supporting the notion of transgender competitors having an advantage, transgender individuals should be allowed to compete […] without restrictions… pic.twitter.com/OWXzxDhYFE

— boysvswomen.com (@boysvswomen) January 16, 2024

… Read the rest

Sex Matters has a new report:

A major new report launched today by Sex Matters reveals in shocking detail that leaders in the women’s sector who advocate for female-only services are routinely subjected to investigations, ostracisation, bullying and employment loss, and have been pressured into adopting policies that compromise women’s welfare and safety. 

Yet a new poll has found that the British public strongly backs single-sex support for women who have been the victims of rape, sexual assault or domestic violence, with 84% believing such women should have access to female-only services.

I’m even more crazy-radical than that: I think all women should have access to female-only services.

The report, titled Women’s services: A sector silenced, is the

Another tribunal. ERCC is Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre.

RA: So I went for a walk with [a manager] and asked how it was going, the trans inclusion in what had been a women-only service, and I just got blanked – told "transwomen are women, there's nothing to discuss".

— Tribunal Tweets (@tribunaltweets) January 15, 2024

RA: Saw things eg from MW about "white saviour feminism", and people saying sex does not matter, which just did not fit with what I was hearing from the people using the service.

— Tribunal Tweets (@tribunaltweets) January 15, 2024

MW is Mridul Wadhwa, the trans-identifying man who is the head of Edinburgh RAPE CRISIS Centre.

RA: I naively thought it was about including everybody.

More about Hvaldimir:

On April 26, 2019, a beluga whale appeared near Tufjord, a village in northern Norway, immediately alarming fishermen in the area. Belugas in that part of the world typically inhabit the remote Arctic and are rarely spotted as far south as the Norwegian mainland. Although they occasionally travel solo, they tend to live and move in groups. This particular whale was entirely alone and unusually comfortable around humans, trailing boats and opening his mouth as though expecting to be fed. And he seemed to be tangled in rope.

When a commercial fisherman named Joar Hesten got a closer look, he realized that the whale was in fact wearing a harness: one strap girdling his neck and

The Holocaust Encyclopedia on Lebensraum:

The concept of Lebensraum—or “living space”—served as a critical component in the Nazi worldview that drove both its military conquests and racial policy.

…

Long before the Nazi period, many Germans looked to eastern Europe as the natural source of their Lebensraum. Beginning in the Middle Ages, the social and economic pressures of over-population in the German states had led to a steady colonization of Germanic peoples in eastern Europe. Increasingly by the twentieth century, however, scholars and the public alike began to view the East as a region whose vast natural resources were wasted on racially “inferior” peoples like Slavs and Jews. A biological view of Lebensraum resonated with an inaccurate

A guy wrote a long piece in The New Statesman explaining how terrible JK Rowling is.

His smoking gun is that she…liked a tweet.

That @NewStatesman piece on JK Rowling tries to offer a deep reading of an author's hidden traits, based on textual analysis. In similar vein: author Nick Hilton said he was writing only about the books, but we can all see what his real game was. pic.twitter.com/nP7UwApQC4

— Kathleen Stock (@Docstockk) January 15, 2024

… Read the rest

The NY Times looks at a Michigan bible college’s efforts to help Trump steal the election.

Last July, the Michigan attorney general, Dana Nessel, a Democrat, brought felony charges against all 16 of the state’s bogus Trump electors; she has said that her investigation remains open, raising questions about whether more charges might be coming. And while the Michigan indictments were the first stemming from the Trump campaign’s effort to seize electoral votes, at least four other swing states are now pursuing criminal investigations.

Hillsdale administrators declined to be interviewed for this article. But in response to written questions, the college said its officials had acted and spoken in a “personal capacity” regarding the 2020 election.

…

How did

Reconstruction meets Trump:

[Last] Tuesday, in response to the federal case brought by special prosecutor Jack Smith over Trump’s alleged role in the January 6 insurrection, Trump threatened a new round of violence – or “bedlam” – if he loses the election. In early February, the US supreme court will also rule on the Colorado supreme court’s decision to disqualify Trump from the state’s ballot for his part in the insurrection.

The two cases might appear to be disconnected, but they are inseparable in law and history. They are united by Congress’s Reconstruction-era action to enforce the 14th amendment’s extension of constitutional rights against the former Confederates’ campaign of racial and political violence – the Ku Klux Klan Acts

Tweeting from DragCon:

Sypario was just magnificent at #dragcon #dragconuk #dragraceitalia and had some of the audience in tears. Posting the whole thing to YouTube later. pic.twitter.com/Ikpg2HVWsp

— daniel (@lordisthisfree) January 14, 2024

Popping off the stage is our Divine Divas in the DragCon UK 2024! @brigiding @VinasDeluxe @PreciousPaulaN

Literally everyone in the crowd brought their cameras out and was screaming! Go DDs! #DragConUK pic.twitter.com/5ezXyLcN6W

— José Alfredo (@uberALFRED) January 14, 2024

https://twitter.com/gatteeno/status/1746310125990609032

They’re no Karens.… Read the rest

From Fair Play for Women:

NEW REPORT: How trans inclusion in sport is harming women and girls

For years women and girls have been facing unfair, and sometimes unsafe, sport because of trans inclusion – which means male inclusion in women’s teams, events and changing rooms. You can read some background on that here and here is the timeline.

The scale of the problem, and its effect on women and girls, has been concealed by the fear around this issue. A culture of intimidation and silencing has forced women to keep quiet or walk away. This is not inclusion, it’s female exclusion.

That even understates it a little. It’s a culture of intimidation and silencing enforced by bullying, punishing, … Read the rest

Oops.

Powerful ‘puberty blocker’ drugs given to hundreds of young people who are confused about their gender significantly risks lowering their IQs, a leading scientific expert has warned.

In an alarming study, Sallie Baxendale, professor of clinical neuropsychology at University College London, called for ‘urgent’ research into the impact of the drugs on children’s brain functions.

NHS England stopped routinely prescribing the drugs, which halt bodily changes in puberty, last year after a damning review found that the treatment could interrupt the process of the brain maturing.

But private gender clinics are still giving puberty suppressants to under 16s in the UK – and trans activists insist the drugs are safe.

And if activists don’t know, who does?!!… Read the rest

All very well, but…I can’t help wondering about a parallel BBC news item on a two day blackface convention. Would that happen?

DragCon UK: Drag queens gather for two-day convention

What do we think? Would there be a headline reading

“BlackfaceCon UK: Blackface minstrels gather for two-day convention”?

No, of course there wouldn’t.

Would there be a headline reading

“TowelheadCon UK: Turban-wearers gather for two-day convention”?

Nope.

Why is it ok to mock women but not other despised groups?

The BBC provides photo after photo of men clownishly dressed and shod and made up and hair-puffed.

Around 180 queens “sashayed” down the pink carpet for the official opening of the event before being welcomed by one of the judges on

Surely this has to be parody.

Children wanting to transition ‘can ignore parents’, says Civil Service diversity ambassador

Saorsa-Amatheia Tweedale, a transwoman in the Department for Work and Pensions, compares puberty blockers to taking the contraceptive pill

Saorsa-Amatheia? Cod Irish plus cod Greek? Come on. Not to mention “Tweedale” – which gets us

Violet Tweedale, née Chambers (1862 – 10 December 1936), was a Scottish author, poet, and spiritualist. 

Saorsa-Amatheia’s granny no doubt.

So anyway:

Saorsa-Amatheia Tweedale, a transwoman civil servant in the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), told colleagues that children who want to transition have the right to ignore their parents’ wishes and compared taking puberty blockers to taking the contraceptive pill.

The official also claimed

Trans women have a HUMAN RIGHT to fantasize in public about kidnapping women in a van.

Trans women have a HUMAN RIGHT to threaten and mock women, while women have no right to say that men are not women.

Make a note of it.

Imagine the indignation, meltdown and inevitable visit from the police had Joanna or Maya had tweeted this about India (which of course they wouldn't as they're not aggressive and unpleasant). Trans is now a pass to be completely above the law. Marginalised my foot. pic.twitter.com/K6zgDTvXTd

— Dennis Noel Kavanagh (@Jebadoo2) January 14, 2024

… Read the rest

Well whaddya know, Yaniv is back at the old grift.

[Update: No he’s not, this story is from Jan 7 2020. H/t Evenera Bowman]

Remember Jessica? She’s back in the news. pic.twitter.com/02ZoWp0Wgs

— Dr. Jebra Faushay (@JebraFaushay) January 14, 2024

… Read the rest

Guest post by Jonathan Gallant

Older campers may recall 9/11/2001, when al-Qaeda activists kidnapped civilian airliners and flew them into the World Trade Center, in a dramatic protest against American neocolonialism and world trade.  Our British comrades immediately formed the Stop The War Coalition, to demand that the US declare a unilateral ceasefire with al-Qaeda.  We at PIMPLESL also insisted that the US refrain from any action other than quiet diplomacy, appeals to the UN, yoga, and aromatherapy.  We explained that if the US had a problem with the incineration of its airline passengers and office workers, that problem should be addressed at the root level by providing better dental care.  We also pointed out that it was hurtful to … Read the rest

From Courthouse News:

A Texas physician’s fears the Biden administration will cut federal funding for her medical practice for her refusal to treat transgender patients under 18 are unfounded, a Justice Department attorney told a Fifth Circuit panel Monday.

Dr. Susan Neese is an internal medicine specialist affiliated with a Baptist hospital in Amarillo, Texas.

She has several patients who are transgender or dealing with gender dysphoria, all of whom are in their 30s and 40s. She will not see transgender patients who are minors.

Unfortunately this is sloppily written. Is the doctor refusing to provide specifically trans “care” or is she refusing to provide any care at all? That needs to be made crystal clear at the outset.… Read the rest

Can people really not figure this out by themselves?

National police guidance allowing transgender officers to strip search people of the opposite biological sex has been temporarily withdrawn after the Government raised concerns about women’s safety.

The National Police Chiefs’ Council told The Telegraph that it was conducting a “thorough” review of its guidance on searches conducted by transgender officers. “In the meantime, forces have been advised to revert to their own policies on strip searches,” the body said.

The review came after Chris Philp, the policing minister, said transgender officers should be stopped from conducting strip searches on suspects of the opposite sex unless they have changed their legal gender.

Hah? What does changing their legal gender have … Read the rest