The smug self-admiration of Billy Bragg is a sight to behold.

Because I’m in the business of calling out hate merchants, not sitting down with them while they lecture me on the error of my ways.

— Billy Bragg (@billybragg) March 24, 2023

He says, merching hatred of women as hard as he can.… Read the rest

Call me crazy but I kind of think schools should try to teach things that are true as opposed to made-up wacky fantasy.

Scottish children as young as 11 are being taught in school that they are “queer” if they do not yet know their sexual orientation, it has emerged.

So….infants are queer, babies are queer, toddlers are queer. That doesn’t sound very true.

Teaching materials at Boroughmuir High School, Edinburgh’s top state school, also claim that there are three biological sexes and suggest that highly controversial concepts around sex and gender are facts.

Highly controversial, and new, and derived from fashion and nagging rather than biology.

The Boroughmuir High presentation states that “queer” is a term “many people

… Read the rest

The Independent reports:

World Athletics has banned trans women from international competition, Sebastian Coe has confirmed.

That is, World Athletics has banned men from international competition. You’d think it would go without saying. If it’s women’s, it’s not men’s.

The governing body has opted to exclude male-to-female transgender athletes and those with differences in sex development (DSD) from female competition if they have gone through male puberty.

…

Lord Coe, president of World Athletics, has confirmed the “difficult” decision to change its rules starting on 31 March.

“Difficult” only because of tons of senseless pressure. I actually remember when everyone took it for granted that things for women were for women.

“The decision that the council made is a

… Read the rest

Starmer is perhaps reconsidering.

Sir Keir Starmer signalled a climbdown on Labour’s transgender stance on Thursday as he said lessons have to be learned from Scotland.

…

Sir Keir had previously vowed to reform the Gender Recognition Act to allow trans people to self-identify, but appeared to back away from the pledge during a press conference in Stoke-on-Trent.

Sir Keir told reporters: “I think that if we reflect on what’s happened in Scotland, the lesson I take from that is that if you’re going to make reforms, you have to carry the public with you.”

But who says they are reforms? Changes aren’t automatically reforms. If you’re going to make “reforms” that trash women’s rights, you don’t have … Read the rest

Very fair and impartial reporting from the Guardian:

The independent senator Lidia Thorpe was pulled to the ground after attempting to storm the stage at a rally in Canberra held by anti-trans activist Kellie-Jay Keen, who also goes by the name of Posie Parker.

Draped in an Aboriginal flag, Thorpe struggled with police before she was stopped by them; she returned to the pro-trans rights rally to cheers.

Except that “anti-trans” isn’t the right label. The issue is the way trans ideology is shredding women’s rights. That’s too long for a label, but “anti-trans” is too inaccurate and prejudicial for a label.

Thorpe, who recently staged a protest attempting to block the Sydney Mardi Gras parade to protest Indigenous

… Read the rest

It’s all about the reckless.

As Fox News continued to broadcast lies about Dominion voting systems and the 2020 election, Tucker Carlson, one of its star hosts, used one word over and over to describe what the network was doing – “reckless”.

Those messages were the first pieces of evidence Justin Nelson, a lawyer representing Dominion, displayed on Tuesday as he began his argument for why a judge should rule the network defamed his client. “Reckless was a meaningful word” – in order to win the case, Nelson has to prove that Fox acted with “actual malice” – that its hosts, producers, and executives knew the statements were false or acted with reckless disregard to the truth.

Interesting. “Reckless … Read the rest

What the Senator said about her intentions in storming up to KJK from behind and yelling “You don’t belong here!”:

Indigenous Senator Lidia Thorpe says she was “pulverised” by police at Kellie-Jay Keen’s anti-trans protest outside Parliament House in Canberra ⁦@australian⁩ pic.twitter.com/kCs0JUVXuz

— Jess Malcolm (@jessmalcolm1) March 23, 2023

“We do not tolerate this kind of filth being on Ngunnawal and Ngambri country. This Nazi support that these people have – they are racist, they are homophobic, they are destroying people’s lives. This country should be ashamed that they even let people like this in this country. Now I went to tell her, or that thing – that they are not welcome here. I got pulverized by … Read the rest

Mr Menno is paying attention.

https://twitter.com/MrMennoTweets/status/1638799268688564224

If you’re going to go wrestling the police it seems kind of stupid to wear a short tight skirt and high-heeled shoes with no backs. Jeans and trainers next time.

https://twitter.com/MrMennoTweets/status/1638801486019719170 https://twitter.com/MrMennoTweets/status/1638813418609156097 https://twitter.com/MrMennoTweets/status/1638815553866301440… Read the rest

Welcome to the urinals, women.

The Lyric Hammersmith offers “all gender” toilets.

The Lyric Hammersmith has been criticised for leaving female theatregoers “uncomfortable” with their gender-inclusive lavatories which feature five urinals and one cubicle.

What’s “gender-inclusive” about having five urinals and one cubicle? Even leaving out, for the sake of argument, the fact that women don’t want to be in a room with a line of men pissing into urinals, why does Lyric Hammersmith think five men attend its plays to every one woman? Why five for men and one for women? How is that “gender-inclusive”?

The London theatre claims that it provides a range of facilities “to meet the needs of all the individuals who use our

… Read the rest

It was a beautiful spring day so I went to the far side of town to walk on a different beach from the one a 20 minute walk from me. On the last bus back, a few blocks from home, a teenage boy got on wearing this:

Updating to add:

It’s “funny.” It’s a “funny” T shirt.

… Read the rest

The complete replacement of thought by wild assertions keeps surprising me, at least when it’s done by people who identify as Dr.

I’m sure you think you’re helping Donna, but you’re just showing your whole anti-trans movement as nasty, bigoted and exclusionary. Yes, that person is a woman if they decide they are. They have autonomy over who they are, and it’s not your place to tell them they are not.

— Victoria Fielding (@DrVicFielding) March 22, 2023

People “have autonomy over who they are” declares the doctor. Really? Do we? Do we have the autonomy to be absolutely anything we can put into words? Can we be dinosaurs, planets, the universe? Can we be a tooth, a bulb, a … Read the rest

Trump wants to be handcuffed, I guess kind of like Jesus schlepping the cross.

Donald Trump has told advisers that he wants to be handcuffed when he makes an appearance in court, if he is indicted by a Manhattan grand jury for his role in paying hush money to adult film star Stormy Daniels, multiple sources close to the former president have said.

Go ahead! Make a martyr of the poor saintly starved man!

Trump’s increasing insistence that he wants to be handcuffed behind his back for a perp walk appears to come from various motivations, including that he wants to project defiance in the face of what he sees as an unfair prosecution and that it would

… Read the rest

But the students were expressing their beliefs.

A West Midlands school has been criticised for failing to “teach controversial issues in a way that is safe for everyone”, after a gay Muslim speaker was challenged by students and later received death threats on social media.

An external report on Wood Green Academy in Wednesbury was commissioned after the incident in November last year, in which students questioned the speaker on his views about homosexuality and Islam.

Khakan Qureshi, founder of the Birmingham Asian LGBT group, was invited to the school’s sixth form to speak on “diversity in the face of adversity”, but the session appeared to descend into chaos, videos posted on social media showed.

After Qureshi said there

… Read the rest

Another consignment of “Why can’t you just support trans rights, why are you so cruelly opposed to trans rights, all the good people are for trans rights, you are such a demonic enemy of trans rights” without any pesky detail about what actual rights they’re talking about. Like…

https://twitter.com/DrVicFielding/status/1638490111796183042

Wonderful you, you’re so empathy, you’re so kind with your so sorry and your sad emoji, but what exactly are the trans rights you’re defending? Also: nobody says trans people “shouldn’t exist.” That’s a stupid but all the more effective lie. The issue is not existence, the issue is fake idenniny and encroachment on the rights and protections of other people – to be exact, of women.

These women who claim

… Read the rest

Bad journalism strikes again.

The latest stop on anti-trans activist Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull’s Let Women Speak tour in Tasmania saw the self-described women’s rights activist swarmed by hundreds of protesters who drowned out the relatively small number of people who turned out in support.

The spirited response left Keen-Minshull, also known as Posie Parker, complaining about a lack of police protection and gave fuel to Kiwis hoping for a similar reaction when the tour arrives in Aotearoa this weekend.

Keen-Minshull has widely criticised policies that support the transgender community and has been labelled as an anti-trans activist.

In the first paragraph the New Zealand Herald calls her “the self-described women’s rights activist” and in the third it says she … Read the rest

I trust you’re as prurient as I am and are wondering what Trump said about DeSantis when he popped like popcorn yesterday. I have ascertained what it was that he said. It’s a classic of trumpery.

Breaking his silence on Donald Trump’s legal troubles, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Monday criticized the Manhattan district attorney who is pursuing charges against the former president and vowed his office would not be involved if the matter trickles into Trump’s adopted home state.

But DeSantis, a rising rival for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, stopped well short of offering support for the former president and instead seemed to poke fun at the situation Trump has found himself in as he attempts

… Read the rest

Kevin McCarthy is kind of tired of all this law enforcement nonsense.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) on Tuesday sought to downplay the legal case related to a hush-money payment by former president Donald Trump to an adult-film actress, saying it involved “personal money” and shouldn’t be able to be prosecuted under the statute of limitations.

“I think you know in your heart of hearts that this is just political,” McCarthy told reporters at a House Republican retreat in Orlando. “And I think that’s what the rest of the country thinks. And we’re kind of tired of that.”

The rest of the country? All of it? Nah, bub, what many of the rest of the country thinks is that … Read the rest

Trump is popping like a whole bushel of popcorn these days.

Donald Trump’s Republican allies in the House are doing what the former president taught them to do – use government power to try to keep his legal threats at bay.

That’s what Congress is for, right? Shielding a corrupt criminal ex-president from the long arm of the law?

Trump’s calls for protests, meanwhile, have authorities on edge in New York, where security cameras and barricades have been erected, and in Washington amid painful flashbacks to his incitement of violence to further his personal and political ends on January 6, 2021.

…

And an ugly spat broke out between Trump and his potential top rival in the GOP nominating race,

… Read the rest

The witch trial of Moira Deeming continues.

Liberal divisions over a bid to expel Victorian MP Moira Deeming from the party room are expected to deepen, despite leader John Pesutto claiming an early victory after an attempt to delay a vote over her future failed.

Liberal MPs will decide early next week whether Deeming should be expelled from the parliamentary party, after she attended a rally headlined by British anti-transgender activist Kellie-Jay Keen where neo-Nazis were photographed performing the Nazi salute at the weekend.

Deeming has vowed to fight the expulsion and says she has done nothing wrong.

How dare she, right? Saying she’s done nothing wrong by attending a feminist rally! She must be a witch!

Pesutto’s

… Read the rest

The London police force is a mess.

The Metropolitan police is broken and rotten, suffering collapsing public trust and is guilty of institutional racism, misogyny and homophobia, an official report has said.

…

The 363-page report details disturbing stories of sexual assaults, usually covered up or downplayed, with 12% of women in the Met saying they had been harassed or attacked at work, and one-third experiencing sexism.

…

The report found a bullying culture, frontline officers demoralised and feeling let down by their leaders, and discrimination “baked into the system”.

But the people in charge are pushing back.

Sir Mark Rowley, the force’s commissioner since September, said he would not use the labels of institutionally racist, institutionally misogynistic and

… Read the rest