The Times July 19 2020:

John Boyne has expressed gratitude after a comedian apologised publicly for the “relentless harassment” that caused the novelist great distress.

In a statement published on Twitter last week, Aidan Comerford issued an apology and retraction for suggesting Boyne “has engaged in transphobia [and] implying that he is transphobic, on a number of occasions”.

Comerford, the author of Corn Flakes for Dinner, a comedy about family life, said he had wrongly tweeted that no transgender person would appear with Boyne on an RTE radio interview with Ryan Tubridy in 2019. “I have been informed that, in fact, no transgender person was invited to appear; therefore, I retract and apologise,” he said.

Comerford also admitted

Oh good, another fuss. There can never be enough fussing.

The Polari Prize, the UK’s literary award celebrating LGBTQ+ writing, has come under fire following the release of its 2025 longlist, with critics accusing the organisers of platforming a writer labelled by some as a “TERF”.

The horror!!

The controversy centres around the inclusion of John Boyne, author of Earth, on the main Polari Book Prize longlist. Boyne has previously faced criticism for his portrayal of trans characters, particularly in his 2019 novel My Brother’s Name is Jessica.

And mere criticism is not enough, there must be shunning.

The novel, which follows a cisgender boy struggling to accept his sibling’s transition, was widely condemned by

BBC tells us:

A former police community support officer who was “obsessed with weapons” has been jailed after she tried to make a gun using a 3D printer.

Zoe Watts, 39, of St Helen’s Avenue, Lincoln, was found with weapons, including knives and a crossbow, alongside parts for 3D printed guns during a raid on her home on 11 December. Watts denied a charge of attempting to manufacture a prohibited weapon, and claimed she was making a “fidget” toy gun as a Christmas present.

Watts, of course, is a large hulking man. This crime is not the crime of a woman; this sentence was not handed down to a woman.

Two days before the raid on her home, Watts

Originally a comment by Dave Ricks on A Harvard professor.

The Harvard prof Sarah Richardson concluded her book review:

Reprising the anti-biological determinist tradition, Fuentes respectfully explains science in plain language to a wider public, presents biological knowledge as one among many sources of sense-making about the world, and recognises biomedical scientists’ responsibility to respond to harmful deployments of inaccurate, overly simplistic, and reductionist science by those attempting to naturalise and depoliticise their hateful views.

This interdisciplinary, scientist-humanist voice is vital in our time. As the Lancet Commission makes clarion, gender is an essential concept for improving health and wellbeing for everyone. Defending research and clinical practice in gender-related areas must be a priority in the face of perilous

2. Translation:
You can be male in body, male in law, untouched by surgery or hormones – and still legally female.
Why?
Because you said so. pic.twitter.com/0hZoixQbjk

— boswelltoday (@boswelltoday) August 7, 2025

7. A definition of “woman” that only includes women is now discriminatory.
If your category excludes men, your category is illegal.
That’s where we are. pic.twitter.com/gMVjrJo1k0

— boswelltoday (@boswelltoday) August 7, 2025

Number 6, the one about smell – does that apply to smells in general? If I don’t like the smell of perfume does that make me a man? If I don’t like the smell of cigarette smoke (I detest it) does that make me chewing gum? But I hate chewing gum too, so now … Read the rest

Originally a comment by Artymorty on Badgey MaBadgerson.

It’s the most ridiculous thing, a safety rating system where everyone rates themselves.

Restaurants in Toronto are inspected by the health commission or whatever it’s called, same as in any other normal city. Here, the inspectors issue a “grade” to the restaurant, a Red, Yellow, or Green Card, which must be prominently displayed at the business entrance.

But imagine if restaurants all just issued their own cards. Each restaurant could just post a big yellow “You’re safe eating with me!” badge on its front door if it chooses to.

It’s so fucking stupid, it’s not even worth imagining. It’s not even funny. It’s just plainly, obviously so dumb, it’s tedious to … Read the rest

Oh come on. Much too easy.

What @UKLabour @bphillipsonMP can’t justify is why it is “dangerous and an affront to dignity” to expect c!s women to use the same loo as trans women – but it is PERFECTLY FINE to stick women who are trans in with c!s men.
And then you have the contradictory “biological” sex… https://t.co/rIyIR8Eljj

— India Willoughby (@IndiaWilloughby) August 8, 2025

Of course they can. It’s because trans women are men! That’s it, that’s all you need.… Read the rest

No hurry. We’ll get to it over the next few months, or perhaps next year, or some time soon after that.

The NHS has delayed a ban on staff who are trans women in female changing rooms and lavatories until the autumn.

Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary, promised new guidance in April, after the Supreme Court ruled that trans women – people who are biological men – should be barred from using women’s single-sex services.

The Telegraph can reveal that NHS England has no plans to bring out the guidance until “late summer or early autumn” – meaning it may not be published until October or November.

That’s ok. It doesn’t matter. It’s only women who are at risk … Read the rest

Jo Bartosch writes:

If there’s one thing predators are good at, it’s spotting soft targets. Thanks to Dr Ronx Ikharia, this could soon be easier than ever. Ikharia – a BBC children’s presenter and NHS emergency medic who identifies as ‘trans nonbinary’ – has launched a new scheme called ‘Safe With Me’. It involves distributing large yellow badges, which signal that the wearer is available to escort ‘trans+ people’ to ‘their preferred facilities’. In other words, it is to help men in frocks breach the law on single-sex spaces.

The first thing that occurs to me is not even the “but women” bit, it’s the glaringly obvious fact that someone saying or signaling something does not make it … Read the rest

Oooh a surge in young pipple idennifying as nonbinaree. But which kind of nonbinaree??

Staff at Scotland’s youth gender clinic say they are struggling to deal with surging numbers of children who identify as neither male nor female.

What mean “deal with”? How do you deal with children who idennify as tigers or cars or archaeologists? What kind of dealing is there?

A warning about the rise in “non-binary” patients was raised as part of a review into the impact of government spending on trans healthcare. However, workers at the Sandyford clinic in Glasgow highlighted a lack of guidance on how they should be looked after.

One health professional revealed that some young “non-binary” patients who say they do

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on A Harvard professor.

…“sex is a biocultural construct. Gamete size represents but one of multiple components and developmental processes—including gonads, hormones, genitals, fertility, mating, parenting behaviour, secondary sexual characteristics, and gender identity.”

And yet none of these other factors results in a third gamete, or individuals that are, biologically, partway between male and female. None of these other complications allow humans to change sex, or offer some “other” pathway for being a woman. “It’s complicated,” doesn’t do the heavy lifting they claim it does. Sure, it’s complicated, but it’s not magic. It’s not arbitrary. It’s not swayed by wishful thinking. It’s not as uncertain and unknowable as they would have … Read the rest

JD Vance gets to steal water from a lake for the sake of a joy ride, but solar panels for the proles is another thing altogether.

The Trump administration is preparing to terminate $7 billion in federal grants intended to help low- and moderate-income families install solar panels on their homes, according to two people briefed on the matter.

The Environmental Protection Agency is drafting termination letters to the 60 state agencies, nonprofit groups and Native American tribes that received the grants under the “Solar for All” program, with the goal of sending the letters by the end of this week, according to the two people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to

Nice for some.

JD Vance’s team had the army corps of engineers take the unusual step of changing the outflow of a lake in Ohio to accommodate a recent boating excursion on a family holiday, the Guardian has learned.

The request from the US Secret Service was made to “support safe navigation” of the US vice-president’s security detail for an August outing on the Little Miami River, according to a statement by the US army corps of engineers (USACE).

Vance was spotted in the south-western Ohio area on 2 August, his 41st birthday, according to social media posts that noted he was seen canoeing on the river, a tributary that Caesar Creek Lake feeds into.

USAID slashed, the National … Read the rest

You know…

It’s 2025 and the @Independent are using black people as human shields for transvestites https://t.co/BY8dn9LEZ3

— Sonya Douglas (@SonyaDouglas) August 7, 2025

What these clowns don’t get is that “trans women” are not the black people in this scenario, they’re the white racists. They are. We’re not; they are. They are men. They are trying to dominate and punish and exile women. They are not the underdogs, they are not the victims, they are the KKK, the Birmingham cops, George Wallace in the schoolhouse door.

They are.… Read the rest

Jean Hatchet lets fly.

Upton and Tickle, who sound like a pair of bad electricians, were in court over the last two weeks for one reason only and that was to try to make people, especially women, say the words, “you are a woman”.

Everywhere they walk they hear these coveted words. They hear them from the compliant, the sycophants and the fearful alike. Their neighbours will say it, their friends will say it, some of their family will say it. Other men in frocks will say it, and they will return the feel-good falsehood. The newspapers will say it, the television will say it, posters will say it and songs will say it…

However, the reason they came

I run away for a few hours and come back to find

2/4
“Gametic Politics: Eggs, Sperm, and Gender/Sex in the 21st Century" is the title of a recently announced workshop organized by the author and her colleague at Yale (link below). It is designed to provide mentorship to early career researchers who “are studying any aspect of…

— Carole Hooven (@hoovlet) August 6, 2025

In it, she asserts that the “gametic definition” of sex—roughly, that there are two sexes, defined by whether the organism produces sperm (male) or eggs (female)—is not only “harmful,” but also “sophistry, not science.” (Lancet piece is below.)

I hold the gametic view. To the best of my knowledge, this is the view held

Victoria Richards at the Independent bravely stands up for male employees handling the breasts of teenage girls seeking their first bras.

…when I recently took my daughter for her first bra fitting, I was peculiarly gratified to see that she acted pretty much the same way I did. Teenagers may have smartphones and TikTok and all the tech and street smarts we didn’t, but some things really do never change.

You don’t say. Rain is still wet, ice is still cold, the earth still rotates on its axis. Thanks for the vacuous banality which warns us that you don’t really have much to say.

The one thing that has changed, on the whole, is Gen Alpha’s greater understanding and empathy

Liar liar liar liar.

India Willoughby:

A mother and a daughter went to a Marks & Spencer store to buy a bra – um – a trans member of staff went over and said “Do you need any help?”

Liar liar liar liar. He is shameless.

A mother took her very young daughter to M&S to buy a bra for the daughter and a male member of staff toddled over and offered to help with fitting a bra for the very young daughter.

The man is scum.… Read the rest

Victoria Smith in The Critic:

When Mary Ann Stephenson was announced as the government’s preferred candidate to take over from Baroness Falkner as chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, every feminist I know was delighted. With three decades’ of experience, working for organisations including the Women’s Budget Group, the Fawcett Society and Liberty, plus advising the British Council, the UN and the TUC on human rights, Stephenson was the perfect pick — a serious candidate, with serious, in-depth knowledge across multiple areas of interest. Who — other than someone who objected to the existence of the role altogether — could possibly object to that? 

And yet some people did. Within days of the announcement, a petition

Yet again the issue is concealed behind layer after layer of dishonest language. In the Telegraph ffs.

M&S apologises over trans employee in bra department

Male employee. The issue was not trans but male.

‘Biological male’ caused a mother and teenage daughter ‘distress’ by approaching them in the lingerie area

What’s with the stupid scare quotes? He is a biological male, so why pretend it’s odd (or worse) to say so?

Marks & Spencer has apologised to a mother for causing her teenage daughter “distress” after she was asked if she needed help by a transgender employee in its bra section.

Male, damn you.

The retailer said it was “truly sorry” after the mother complained that her 14-year-old daughter