Author: Ophelia Benson

Well, that’s something. Just the undoing of a bad thing, but in a storm of bad things, we take what we can get.

A federal judge dismissed the indictments against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James on Monday.

The judge found that President Donald Trump’s appointment of interim US Attorney Lindsey Halligan in Alexandria, Virginia, was invalid.

Trump handpicked Halligan for the role amid increasing pressure to bring criminal cases against his political enemies, including Comey and James.

“The Attorney General’s attempt to install Ms. Halligan as Interim U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia was invalid,” Judge Cameron McGowan Currie wrote in her Monday order.

Jeez. If a dirty guy can’t install dirty people to do dirty work for him, what will become of the dirty guys?

According to Currie, “all actions flowing from Ms. Halligan’s defective appointment” including the indictments against Comey and James “were unlawful exercises of executive power and are hereby set aside.”

The judge tossed out the cases “without prejudice,” leaving open the possibility that the cases against Comey and James can be brought again alleging the same conduct. But McGowan Currie appeared to acknowledge in her ruling that for Comey, such a move may not be possible since the statute of limitations for his charges has now passed.

…

Comey addressed the dismissal in a video he posted to Instagram.

“I’m grateful that the court ended the case against me, which was a prosecution based on malevolence and incompetence and a reflection of what the Department of Justice has become under Donald Trump, which is heartbreaking,” he said. “But I was also inspired by the example of the career people who refuse to be part of this travesty. It cost some of them their jobs, which is painful, but it preserved their integrity, which is beyond price.”

He continued to say that a message must be sent that the president “cannot use the Department of Justice to target his political enemies.”

Hey, they renamed Defense the Department of War – why not rename the DoJ the Department of Revenge?

Victoria Smith on the justbekind trope:

The past week saw another “reasonable” man — in this case the journalist David Aaronovitch — argue that calling a male person “she” if he so wishes is just a matter of being kind.

I like David Aaronovitch, but I don’t like this argument, which is one we all see a lot.

…there is quite clearly a potential cost to women when male people are referred to as “she”. That it may only be an emotional one, impacting on one’s psychological well-being, does not make it an irrelevance. Women’s physical safety, boundaries and access to public life matter, but so, too, does our own self-respect.

Self-respect in the form, for instance, of not helping to establish this ridiculous custom of calling men “she” if they demand it. No. It’s a fiction, that’s insulting to women, and a threat to our rights. No we don’t have to humor it anyway: it’s bad for women. Why isn’t that enough?

Respecting someone else’s religious beliefs does not require me to share them; by contrast, using language which includes male people in the category “woman” — when I am a woman myself — forces me to express a view about myself which I do not hold. 

It’s a view that says male-imagined femininity, not femaleness, is the thing that differentiates me from men. It’s one that completely erases the difference in power as I experience it. It’s a denial of my own inner life and rejection of sexist norms, and to go along with it is humiliating. Just because it is a form of humiliation that women are used to — and have been conditioned to accept in the name of kindness — does not lessen its cruelty. 

Its cruelty and its complete indifference to women’s wants, needs, rights – everything.

A woman’s right to prioritise her perception of herself, refusing to allow it to be overridden by male fantasy, is never a luxury. It is fundamental to there being any equality between the sexes. That women have used incorrect pronouns to “be kind” before is not proof it costs us nothing. It’s merely proof of how much we have given already and how much we are owed. 

How about men do some being kind for a change?

Yet again the same old point missed.

Scouts Scotland is accused of ignoring the Supreme Court’s gender ruling and allowing children and adults to use the toilets and sleeping quarters of the opposite sex.

But of course it isn’t just “allowing”; it’s also forcing. The forcing part is the problem. By “allowing” some people to use the toilets and sleeping quarters of the opposite sex you are forcing others to do so. You can’t do the one without doing the other. That’s the whole point, which is always left unstated by sloppy reporting. The news media need to start making this clear at the very beginning.

Scouts Scotland said its trans and gender identity guidance — which states that “trans people should use the facilities they feel most comfortable using” — would remain unchanged. It said its leaders would be encouraged to provide “mixed-gender toilets wherever possible”.

Thus we see that what makes trans people comfortable is important while what makes everyone else comfortable is not important.

The organisation marked Trans Awareness Week this month by underlining its commitment to its policy. Lisa Cowan, its LGBTI lead, said last week: “We strive to ensure that everyone, regardless of their gender identity, feels safe, welcome and supported.”

No they don’t. That’s just a lie. They don’t strive to ensure that girls feel safe or welcome or supported.

Forget the substance for a minute, to ask questions about the presentation.

‘Baby P’ refers to Peter Connolly, a baby boy who was murdered with a horrific catalogue of injuries going back months

The comparison to women demanding cross dressing men aren’t in spaces we are undressing is sickening@HelenWebberley what is actually wrong with you? pic.twitter.com/ht910ZbURi

— Le_Sorelle_Arduino KPSS (@Sorelle_Arduino) November 24, 2025

Second question: what’s with picking up the giant mug and eventually taking a swig or pretending to?

In short why is this so stagey and fake and pretentious? It’s toe-curling. The one in her living room with all the snow-white fabrics was bad enough but this is horrendous.

And then, most revolting of all, while reciting her rehearsed lines she picks up the brush and dabs it in the whatever and then brushes her face with it. WHY??? Is she thinking this is like an intimate moment with Joan Crawford or Loretta Young circa 1940? Why does she think anyone wants to watch her putting on makeup, or corn starch or pepper or thin air for all we know?

And, cherry on the cake, she does this repellent vanity-stroking thing while chatting – yes chatting – about a baby who was tortured to death.

I can’t watch any more of it. She makes me ill.

Spot the error.

Being gay isn't a choice.

Being Trans isn't a choice.

Being disabled isn't a choice.

The colour of your skin isn't a choice.

How you treat people, that is a choice.

Learn to love your neighbour, whoever they are.

Let's chose love over biggotry.

— Harry Eccles (@Heccles94) November 21, 2025

But it’s too easy of course. It’s the second item. “Being trans” is a choice. It is, at a minimum, a choice to put that particular label on feelings and/or ideas about the self. Less minimally, it can be a choice to join the trend of claiming to be trans or nonbinaree or transnonbinaree or some other item on the list of gender-special labels.

It’s not necessarily a choice to have unpleasant feelings about being the sex one is, but it is a choice to give those feelings a suddenly fashionable label.

Saying that is of course heresy, which is one reason it’s so tempting for people to say they are trans. It’s fun to be able to punish people who refuse to believe in your holy magical self!

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Replacing outdate diagnostic categories.

Obviously, a man does not – indeed cannot know what it feels like to be a woman: I, for example, can only know what it feels like to be me, but the ideology says otherwise.

Exactly. I can’t extend my own experience to other men, let alone women. Me is all I’ve got. I have no other frame of reference. I happen to be male, but I can’t claim any expertise in “maleness” or “being a man.” I assume some degree of similarity and commonality with other humans, in that they will have their own subjectivities, but I can’t know what those subjectivities are. I am bound by and to my own experience. I can’t claim that mine is better, or different, or wrong, as I can’t “try on” anyone else’s in anything but a limited, imaginative way, through, say, reading the thoughts and perspectives of others. But this is more like getting a postcard, not even being a tourist. It’s a message from outside, not a personal visit. And you certainly can’t live there. You can get a feel for it, but you can’t know it.

To claim that one is something they’re not (and can’t be) is, quite apart from impossible, presumptuous and wrong-headed. “Gender identity” presupposes some essential “maleness” or “femaleness” of perception, perspective, or personality that is independent of both the sexed body, and the individual, offering some interior standard of comparison to judge against from within the self. How else can they say “I’m not A, but B”. How can you know this if you have never been a B and can never be one? You can’t step out of A, or into B. How would you know? It would be like me wondering if how I see a given shade of blue is the same as everyone/anyone else’s perception, and confidently claiming my own perception is wrong.

Amputees who have “phantom” limbs have experience of once having had the now missing limb. Someone who is now old has had experience of once having been younger. They have relevant experiences that allow them to compare and judge these two states of being and perception. (Whether their memories of these states of being is accurate might be another question, given the cliche of polishing, embellishing, and remaking our own histories, wherein “When I was young, we had to walk twenty miles to school every day, uphill in both directions!” is another question.) These are comparisons we can have license to make because they’re part of our personal histories. They’re in our CV. Being the sex one is not isn’t. There is no relevant experience that can allow you to claim another state of being. This is not to say that those few with actual dysphoria are not experiencing discomfort and suffering, but the cause is not being “in the wrong body.” The cause must be something other than a supposed “incongruence” between Soul and Body. Descartes is dead: long live Zombie, Gender Identity Descartes.

You are the body you’re “in”. You can’t visit other bodies to see if their grass is greener. You can see how the other half lives, but you can’t be the other half. Not for an instant. You’re stuck with your own grass, weeds and all. “Treating” your lawn with napalm is not going to make it any greener. Quite the opposite in fact. Attacking the body seems to be a poor choice for dealing with something that seems to be, on the face of it, purely psychological. This is “mind over matter” taken to a destructive extreme. Wasting time, energy and lives on “treatments” that can never work, can only postpone or prevent solutions that can actually alleviate the mental suffering that sterilization and mutilation never will.

Telegraph exclaims

Transgender people face ban from single-sex spaces based on appearance

Yes, and?

People have always faced bans from single-sex spaces based on appearance. That’s because appearance is how we know who is what. It always has been. What else would it be? Identity papers? Come on. There just aren’t enough edge cases to make that not true.

Transgender people could be banned from single-sex spaces based on appearance under equalities guidance, it has been reported.

NHS trusts, councils and businesses have continued to allow trans women to use female-only facilities despite the Supreme Court ruling in April that laws against sex-based discrimination should only apply to biological women. Service providers have been waiting for updated guidance from the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) to be published before instituting changes in venues open to the public.

In other words service providers have been stalling, because they don’t want to let go of the fun of tormenting women.

Rebecca Paul, the Conservative MP for Reigate, recently asked if and when the Government would get round to implementing the law on single sex spaces, particularly prisons. “HMP Downview, a women’s prison in Banstead, has five biological males in it,” she told the Commons.

Yes yes yes but it’s only women, so it doesn’t matter.

When did the word “minority” become shorthand for “set of wonderful people unfairly neglected or persecuted by the plump prosperous majority”?

That’s not what it means. It just means non-majority. It’s quite neutral.

Of course there is. Successful projects to eliminate or find a cure for various diseases eliminate the minorities who suffered from them. Projects to extend education to all children eliminate minorities who have never so much as seen a school. And so on. Lots of kinds of minority are kinds of disprivilege, and eliminating them is not genocide, it’s genobenefit.

Guys like Brian Wu want to grab some of that benefit and attention and cuddling for themselves, despite the fact that they’re not the people the benefit is intended for and they’re not in any need of the benefit. It’s a pukey spectacle, men waving an “I am so persecuted” flag while they shred women’s rights.

Natalie Angier writes:

In the 1990s, while working on my book “Woman: An Intimate Geography,” I mentioned the project to Larry Smith, a middle-aged editor at Parade magazine. He shook his head in astonishment. “I’ve never understood women,” he said. “When I was young, I wasn’t even sure women were people.”

Reading all the crap from the Epstein dump, including emails by high-powered male scientists and other predatory academics, I realize that nothing has changed. For too many men, women are, in Epstein’s despicable phrase, “a life support system for a vagina.”

Enough is ENOUGH!

I’ve been realizing that every day my whole adult life. Men are the norm, women are the weird aberration who can be ignored for most purposes.

Trump belittles Zelensky. Again.

President Donald Trump on Saturday heaped pressure on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, saying he can either agree to the White House’s peace proposal by Thursday, or “continue to fight his little heart out.”

Little shmittle. His heart is a lot bigger than Trump’s.

The comment, made to reporters in Washington, is part of a White House push to get Ukraine’s leaders to agree to a 28-point plan to end the war that began with Russia’s invasion in February 2022. It has drawn criticism, including from Republican lawmakers, for being favorable to Moscow.

The plan forces Ukraine to make concessions long seen as unacceptable to the country, including ceding territory to Russia and significantly reducing the size of the Ukrainian army. It would also bar the presence of any NATO troops on Ukrainian soil.

Aka Trump is telling Zelensky to surrender.

So having gotten that off my chest I’ll regale you with what the Experts say. Courtesy of the World Health Organization I give you Gender incongruence and transgender health in the ICD. What’s the ICD? International Classification something. Directorate? Department? Dogma? I don’t know. I’ll let you know if I find out.

ICD-11 and Gender Incongruence

The 11^th edition of the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD-11). The newly revised ICD-11 codes includes new changes to reflect modern understanding of sexual health and gender identity.

Hmm. Modern understanding or modern batshit crazy?

ICD-11 has redefined gender identity-related health, replacing outdated diagnostic categories like ICD-10’s “transsexualism” and “gender identity disorder of children” with “gender incongruence of adolescence and adulthood” and “gender incongruence of childhood” respectively. Gender incongruence has been moved out of the “Mental and behavioural disorders” chapter and into the new “Conditions related to sexual health” chapter. This reflects current knowledge that trans-related and gender diverse identities are not conditions of mental ill-health, and that classifying them as such can cause enormous stigma. 

Ahhhh ok, I see where we are now. We’re pretending that reality-defying notions about
“gender” are not reality-defying notions at all but important new insights into how absolutely true it is that if Jim says he’s a woman he absolutely is a woman no matter what’s in his pants, and furthermore it’s very healthy and life-affirming that he is in touch with his inner wooooomannn.

What is Gender Incongruence?

Gender incongruence of adolescence or adulthood : Gender Incongruence of Adolescence and Adulthood is characterised by a marked and persistent incongruence between an individual´s experienced gender and the assigned sex, which often leads to a desire to ‘transition’, in order to live and be accepted as a person of the experienced gender, through hormonal treatment, surgery or other health care services to make the individual´s body align, as much as desired and to the extent possible, with the experienced gender. 

Hm. One, that is circular. Two, it doesn’t answer the question, it just restates it. Other than that it’s brilliant stuff.

It’s a tad alarming that this masticated gorp is coming from the World Health Organization, don’t you think?

Ok so I’m trying to find an explanation of what people mean when they talk about “gender incongruence.” Why am I doing that? Because of the new plan for a new study into are blockers bad or are they perfectly ok provided you read the directions carefully.

Two studies to investigate the impact of puberty blockers in young people with gender incongruence have been announced by researchers in the UK after an expert view said gender medicine was “built on shaky foundations”.

Oh they’ve noticed, have they? Could they not then just call a halt and do the studies with a calm mind? No, because gender fiddling always has to be done right away, just in case it turns out not to be a good idea. At least that batch of kids will be capt treated before the meddlers get a chance to protect take their precious blockers away.

Puberty blockers were originally used to treat early onset puberty in children but have also been used off-label in children with gender dysphoria or incongruence.

I’m not quite clear on what “children with incongruence” are.

I suppose if I have to pick a meaning I would guess incongruence=feeling that one is more like a girl than a boy or (more rarely) vice versa. But it’s not very satisfactory, is it. People “feel” a lot of things. People “feel that” a lot of things. It’s part of being human. We don’t just obediently roam the Savannah picking up coconuts or chasing down giraffes as appropriate to our species – we ruminate on What We Are and What We Feel and Do They Match.

The problem is that much of this ruminating is stupid, and the trans version of it is the stupidest of all. That, I suppose, is what “gender incongruity” means – a silly bloated doctrine woven out of the complaints of lots of people about how this skirt or this moustache or this speeding ticket just doesn’t feel right somehow. It could all just be We’re in a mood and we don’t like how we look in this rag, but that’s not interesting enough. It has to be something more impressive and elegant than just grouchy “I hate those shoes.” The Good Witch of the North Seminar came up with incongruence, and we haven’t stopped playing with the new toy since.

Excuse me, I got a little carried away there. New study on blockers, so that whole new set of kids can be ruined for life. Reason for new study: better understanding of “gender incongruence”. What does that mean? It means people are silly enough to think that if they do something coded girly while a man they have gender incongruence, whereas if they do something coded boyish while a woman they have gender incongruence. It sounds so nice, don’t you think so?

It takes some nerve.

"How very dare a woman I don't like crowdfund £65K for a legal challenge", says filthy rich but emotionally fragile man who has crowdfunded almost £6.5 million for some 90 legal challenges since 2017, without ever once bothering to ask the public what they think. pic.twitter.com/Kz3YkbjOy4

— Professor Richard Dunstan (@Wonkypolicywonk) November 22, 2025

If it’s ok for him to spout off about “trans rights” every five minutes why is it no ok for Maya Forstater or any other woman to spout off about hers?

He’s not a sharp thinker or writer or talker, Jolyon. I’d go so far as to say he’s kind of stupid, at least in this area. Apparently he’s good at telling rich people how to avoid paying taxes, but when it comes to snarling at uppity women, he’s a dud. Obnoxious, but not skilled.

LGB Alliance writes:

We are horrified by the announcement of the PATHWAYS trial. As a charity representing lesbians, gays and bisexuals we are outraged that the lives of mostly LGB teenagers are held in such contempt that blocking their development has been given ethical approval.

We are supporting increasing numbers of detransitioned LGB people who are appalled that more children will be subjected to a trial of drugs we already know to be harmful. They now know they had difficulty accepting their homosexuality. They can attest to the effects of these drugs but have not been asked. All the evidence shows that lesbians, gay and bisexual young people make up the majority of those who will suffer.

Every detail of this planned trial is a disgrace. Recruiting children for a trial of drugs now known to be harmful, while more countries are banning them, is indefensible. The follow-up time is laughably short, the self-evaluation by the children is ridiculous and the expectation of “reasonable prospect of benefit” flies in the face of everything we now know about puberty blockers. Puberty is an essential stage in human development. Recruiting children who have been led to fear it, in the current online and social climate, verges on a criminal enterprise.

UK libel law means they have to say “verges on” but the reality is clearly that it doesn’t just verge.

Yes but…

Wait up. We didn’t say that when you say “pregnant people” you’re saying women don’t get pregnant. What we say is that the ridiculous “pregnant people” goes out of its way to erase women, and attempts to spread the silly delusion that people in general get pregnant. We also say this is repulsively typical of trans manipulation.

Yes of course “trans men” – who are women – can get pregnant. Of course “Non-Binary people” – which is meaningless – can get pregnant if they are women. Duh. People who like chocolate can get pregnant if they are women. People who are allergic to coconut can get pregnant if they are women. Random descriptor people can get pregnant if they are women. We know. We just point out that the random descriptor is beside the point. A relevant descriptor would be “infertile” or “15th century” or similar.

As for facts, they too are clearly not the issue here. The issue is manipulation, verbal contortion, meaningless sloganizing. Facts are somewhere over the horizon.

Euan certainly is illiterate for a purported “journalist”.

“deminish” “dissolutioned” – he needs to repeat second grade.

Wasn’t the BBC supposed to be getting over this? Learning better? Getting a clue about the relentless campaign to shove women aside? Stop mocking and insulting women? Stop obsessing about one tiny demographic while ignoring half of all human beings?

I thought it was, but apparently the drag desk did not get the memo.

Top of the page is a huge photo of four men in drag.

It’s been nine months since the Dragonfly Lounge’s stage lights first went on, the music played and its doors opened to everyone in Colchester. It is an inclusive LGBTQ+ bar and community space that hosts drag cabaret, live music and space for local producers to showcase their crafts.

Co-owner Jo Palmer-Tweed describes herself as an ally of the community. “The motivation is to provide a safe space for people that’s properly inclusive. So I don’t care if you’re a squaddie, if you are a ‘trans person to be’, whatever you are, you are welcome here.”

Of course, if you’re a woman, you probably won’t feel very welcome there.

The story is actually about the Budget and taxes, but hey, drag queens anyway.

Hahahaha classic Trump.

Trump offered praise for New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani on Friday after the two men met for the first time at the White House to discuss the growing issue of affordability.

While the Republican president and the Democratic mayor-elect have hurled searing attacks at each other in the recent past, they repeatedly shrugged off those words while appearing side by side in the Oval Office.

At one point, when Mamdani was asked for the second time about having called Trump a “fascist,” the president gave him cover. “That’s OK, you can just say yes,” Trump said after Mamdani began to respond. “It’s easier than explaining it.”

Trump also appeared to backtrack on his prior threat to withhold federal funding for New York City if Mamdani became its mayor. “I don’t think that’s going to happen,” Trump said.

There, that’s the classic bit – “going to happen” – as if he’s talking about some mysterious ungovernable external entity, as opposed to his own shabby pathetic self. He talks about the mysterious external entity a lot.

Trump is smitten.

Zohran Mamdani visited Trump today at the WH, and it did not go the way most Republicans thought it would. Trump has always recognized and fawned over star power, and that is exactly the way he treated Mamdani. Fox reporter to Mamdani: “You referred to Trump as despot… Trump interrupts: I’ve been called much worse than a despot. So it’s not that insulting.”

Ok then. We’ll call him the despot from here on out.

Trump: “I tell you, the press has eaten this thing up. I have had a lot of meetings with the heads of major countries, nobody cared. The biggest people come over from other countries and nobody cares but they did care about this meeting, and it was a great meeting.”

Q to Trump – “Would you feel comfortable living in NYC under a Mamdani admin? Trump: Yeah, I would.”

Republican campaign consultants built their entire midterm strategy around making Mamdani into the devil incarnate and the face of Democratic Party, then Trump slobbers all over him today in the Oval!

The heart wants what it wants.

Trump then proceeded to end Elise Stefanik’s campaign for governor: Q – “Stefanik has campaigned on calling Mamdani a jihadist. Do you think you’re standing next to a jihadist? Trump: No… but she’s out there campaigning. You say things sometimes in a campaign. You’d have to ask her about that. I met with a man who is a rational person.”

Ahhhhhh you say things sometimes in a campaign. So you confirm you said a lot of things that weren’t true and we should feel free to ignore what you say in future. Sounds good.

Originally a comment by Artymorty on Other minds.

There’s something about gender expression and magical thinking that seems remarkably consistent across cultures, at least in boys, if not as often in girls. Males who exhibit atypically feminine interests or behaviours are often deemed to have extra-mystical souls. They’re more connected to the spiritual world than other men and women. They’re often made out to be shamans, or priests, or are assigned to ceremonial or ritual duties. They aren’t treated as entirely human.

It accidentally exposes how primitive the thinking is among “gender identity” believers: for all the trans activists’ window dressing about spectrums, they still envision men and women as essential castes. Men and women are material after all; the “spectrum” is the liminal space between the essential man and the essential woman — it’s an opening into the spiritual domain, whose inhabitants transcend the material world.

These are precious beings who must be protected and revered, because they aren’t quite material; they are outside the corporeal sexes.

Therefore it’s immaterial what we do to a trans person’s body. The body is merely the vessel that this magical being occupies. It is not the being himself; it is a vulgar carapace. All the better to enhance it — to shape it to reflect the beauty of his soul.

All of this is an outcropping of our species’ innate instinct to tell men and women apart. As always, the transgender phenomenon only proves how fundamentally we distinguish between males and females. It’s just that the trans believers process the stereotypical outliers in a radically superstitious framework, and the “gender criticals” don’t.