Author: Ophelia Benson

  • The B word

    Elie Mystal at The Nation talks the usual stale point-missing drivel.

    I’ve come to understand that advocating for the fundamental humanity, dignity, and equality of transgender people, especially transgender women, is a controversial stance. I realize that there are a lot of people who otherwise support legal and social equality think that there must be some way to carve transgender people out of our society and place them off to the side, with a diminished suite of rights and privileges. 

    No, that’s wrong. Of course it’s wrong. The reality is the other way around: trans ideology has invented a new and fictitious suite of rights and privileges.

    These people are wrong. Bigotry must be fought everywhere and at all times. 

    But “these people” don’t exist, because we don’t have the thoughts you claim we do. Your argument depends on the giant strawman that gender atheists think trans people should have no rights. If you can’t make your case without lying, your case should be dismissed.

    It’s not “bigotry” to know that men are not women.

    Put another way, the court ruled that transgender women and girls have no constitutional right to equality. It is a disgusting ruling.

    And it’s not just about sports. It’s about whether transgender women and girls have the same rights as everybody else. It’s about whether they have the same rights as cis people, and about whether they have the same rights as transgender men. And the court said “no.”

    None of that is true. “Cis” people don’t have a right to play on the opposite sex team. If you can’t make your case without lying, your case should be dismissed.

    Prohibiting trans women from participating in sports is discrimination on the basis of gender norms, something that is also not allowed under Title IX. 

    No it isn’t. Furthermore, the issue is not prohibiting men who claim to be trans from participating in sports, it’s prohibiting them from participating in women’s sports. They can go right on participating in men’s sports.

    If you can’t make your case without lying…

  • Simple indeed

    Sir, that’s not the issue.

    Nobody is saying trans people don’t have a “right to exist”.

    The issue is not existence, it’s trans ideology. People who claim to be the sex they’re not exist, but they’re wrong (or lying) about themselves.

    This isn’t a particularly odd or extreme claim. People are often wrong about themselves.

    Of course people who claim to be trans have the “right to exist” but it doesn’t follow that they have the right to force us all to agree that they are the sex they are not.

    Pretending their “right to exist” is contested is typical of the manipulative bullshit that gender ideology is drowning in.

  • Seeking to have the case dismissed

    Trump’s lawsuit may bite him in the ass.

    In defending against Donald Trump’s defamation claim, the BBC has demanded extensive records from November 2020 to January 2021, including phone logs, schedules, and diaries. The broadcaster also wants names of everyone Trump communicated with regarding the ‘Stop the Steal’ rally and Capitol riot. 

    …

    Trump’s lawsuit, filed in December 2025, alleges that a Panorama episode spliced two separate remarks to create the impression he directly urged violence on January 6, omitting his call for peaceful protest. The BBC apologised for the edit, calling it an ‘error of judgment’, but denied defamation and refused compensation. The fallout led to high-profile resignations at the BBC and triggered a claim for £7.5 billion in damages under defamation and deceptive trade practices laws.

    The BBC is seeking to have the case dismissed, arguing that the Miami court lacks jurisdiction since the programme was neither produced nor broadcast in Florida or the US. Its lawyers also contend Trump cannot show harm given his re-election and strong Florida win after the broadcast. Press freedom groups have labelled the suit a potential SLAPP case, noting the high ‘actual malice’ standard Trump must meet to succeed. 

    Legal commentators note that Trump’s lawsuit risks exposing him to the very scrutiny he has long tried to avoid, with the BBC’s discovery requests potentially opening a window into his actions around January 6. This dynamic is a common pitfall in defamation cases, where plaintiffs’ conduct becomes subject to examination. Whether the court grants the BBC’s requests will determine if Trump must disclose records he has fought to keep private.

    Please please please please please make it happen.

  • After complaints

    He shouldn’t have been there in the first place.

    A trans woman was forcibly removed from a female-only nudist lido by police after refusing to leave.

    They were ejected from the “Paradiesli” nude section of the Marzili lido in Bern on Sunday after complaints from other swimmers that they did not appear biologically female.

    After two female swimmers said they felt harassed by the presence of the bather, some visitors began challenging the trans woman’s presence at the popular swimming spot and asking them to leave.

    He, he, him. A man doesn’t become plural when he claims to be a woman. Using a plural pronoun just makes the reporting unclear and confusing.

    When police arrived, the bather was pushed to the ground with “rough physical force”, handcuffed and taken away, supporters said.

    Could that possibly be because he resisted arrest or refused to leave? I don’t know, but I’m guessing the police didn’t push him to the ground just for the hell of it.

    The swimmer was held at a police station for about two hours, while a crowd of supporters rallied outside in a city square, Swiss Info reported.

    The trans woman then spent the night in a hospital, with sources close to them calling the police operation “disproportionate” and resulting in bruises on their body.

    The force said the bather actively resisted officers and refused after repeated requests to leave the female-only area.

    Well there you go. If naked guy doesn’t want to get pushed to the ground, naked guy should leave when the cops tell him to leave.

    Bern has now apologised and criticised the police after pointing out that the person concerned met access requirements under Switzerland’s self-identification rules.

    The city said in a statement that the decision to remove the trans bather “turned out to be wrong in hindsight”.

    It said the bathing company “mistakenly opted for a police-ordered removal of the trans woman. The tense atmosphere led to this misjudgment of the situation.”

    The city said it “expressly regrets this decision and apologises to the woman affected… All individuals who identify as women and live as such have access to the voluntary nudist area.”

    So for the billionth time the bro wins and women lose. Thanks, city of Bern.

  • Blatant ≠ legal

    No corruption here, no siree.

    As President Donald Trump boarded his inaugural flight on the new Air Force One, a luxury jet donated by the government of Qatar, he shared his excitement for the new aircraft and its foreign builders, saying the US “couldn’t build a plane like this.”

    Sir sir sir are you aware that you’re not supposed to accept bribes?

    “I’m excited about the first flight,” he told reporters ahead of his trip to North Dakota on Wednesday for an America 250 celebration.

    Sir sir sir you’re not allowed to accept bribes.

    The new jet, an unconditional gift estimated to be worth about $400 million, has generated legal, ethical and national security questions. 

    Just slightly.

    Trump, who is expected to use the jet until a new US-built aircraft is finished in about two years, said there has “never been a plane like it.”

    “Frankly, we couldn’t build a plane like this because we wouldn’t be willing to spend the kind of money necessary. They spent top dollars,” he said of the Qataris.

    Yes, sir, and that’s called a bribe. It’s corrupt. It’s illegal. It’s not allowed. You’re not supposed to be doing it. Bragging about it in public doesn’t make it legal.

  • Not with women then

    Sigh.

    Meaning what? It’s singling out, and targeting, and harming people who claim to be the other sex to prevent male people from taking women’s sports and prizes and jobs?

    No. Of course it’s not. Men remain men however they idennify, and they don’t get to take women’s sports and prizes and jobs.

    It’s the biggest con job in the world to convince women that we should be cheering on men who are determined to take women’s sports and prizes and jobs.

  • Finally remove

    Well done, FWS.

    For Women Scotland has won another important victory against the Scottish Government, forcing it to finally remove all trans-identifying men from the women’s prison estate.

    The Scottish Prison Service policy had been that trans-identifying male prisoners who had not committed violent, harassing or threatening crimes against women did not generally pose “an unacceptable risk of harm to those housed in the women’s estates” [paragraph 11 of the judgment]. Trans-identifying men who had been convicted of a violent crime against women in the past could be placed in a women’s prison based on an individual risk assessment. 

    Ridiculous, isn’t it. Let’s house women with tigers and rely on individual risk assessment to weed out the tigers too likely to act like tigers.

    The Scottish Government had refused to change this policy even after the Supreme Court made clear that “sex”, “woman” and “man” mean, and were always intended to refer to, biological sex, and that single-sex services are based on sex. 

    Truly obstinate deep-seated hatred of women.

  • Do you, Mister Jones?

    Spot the irony.

    Says the magazine that calls itself “Mother Jones” – not Father Jones, not Trans-mother Jones, not Non-binary Jones, not Parent Jones, but MOTHER Jones.

  • Comparative obfuscation

    BBC version also bad, of course.

    They’re not women. They’re men who claim to be transgender – there’s no way of verifying, of course, because it’s all in the mind. How convenient. Can I idennify as Elon Musk and have all his money?

    The point of course is to put the poor darling oppressed persecuted helpless men who claim to be women front and center, and demote the women who want their rights back to a shadowy afterthought. That’s always the point.

    However, the substance (as opposed to the headline) of the BBC version is more truthy than usual.

    More than two dozen states have enacted bans since Idaho did so in 2020.

    Under those bans, a transgender woman – a biological male who identifies as a woman – is not permitted to compete in female sports at schools and colleges.

    Welp, there it is. A biological male is not permitted to compete in female sports. No shit, Sherlock. Female sports=female sports.

  • NBC spits on women

    What a disgusting way of putting it.

    It’s not any kind of blow to lesbian rights or gay rights or bisexual rights. It’s also not a blow to trans rights, because trans rights don’t mean men can play in women’s sports. Men don’t have any right to play in women’s sports, no matter how they “identify”.

    The news article is just as bad and there’s more of it.

    WASHINGTON — Delivering another major blow to LGBTQ rights, the Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld state laws that ban transgender athletes from participating in girls’ and women’s sports.

    Go to hell, NBC News. Why do you put the putative rights of trans people ahead of those of girls and women? Why do you put the highly contested “rights” of men who claim to be women ahead of those of girls and women? Why do you frame men who claim to be women as massively important and women as trivial spiteful nothings? Why do you buy into this abusive grotesque ass-backward framing?

    I don’t suppose we’ll ever know.

  • Not a single name!

    Interesting conversation.

    Kristof’s full reply:

    Elon, I can give you many, many names of people who have died because of your aid cuts.:

    *Yamah Freeman was a 23-year-old woman who died in childbirth because you stopped paying for the diesel for ambulances in her part of Liberia. I talked to her parents and sister in their village.

    *Gbessey Kiadu, age 1, died of malaria because of your cuts in Liberia. I talked to his mom in her village.

    *Ibrahim Koroma, an infant, died of AIDS in Sierra Leone after you interrupted HIV supplies. I talked to health workers who cared for him.

    *Achol Deng was an 8-year-old girl with HIV in South Sudan who died when you cut funding for the health care worker who provided her medicines. I talked to him.

    I could go on and on. In almost every village you go to in South Sudan, Uganda, Liberia, Sierra Leone or other countries I reported in, you find people dying because of aid cuts. I challenge you: Come with me on a reporting trip, and we’ll talk to these moms and dads, and you’ll see the dying children themselves. I think if you see the kids whose lives are at stake, maybe you’ll change your mind.

    That last sentence is very generous to Musk. I don’t think anything will change his mind.

  • Declined

    You do the math.

  • No you may not define “woman”

    Weirdness from New Zealand.

    New Zealand First is celebrating the opportunity to ask MPs “What is a Woman?”. What would its proposed law change achieve?

    A New Zealand First MP’s bill aims to clearly define men and women according to their biological sex – but legal experts say its potential impact is being overstated.

    Wut?

    New Zealand needs a bill to define what women and men are? Don’t we already know? By “we” I mean people, people in general, people over the age of 2.

    The proposed law change would define woman as “adult human biological female” and man as “adult human biological male” in the Legislation Act – meaning all laws and regulations which contained these words would be seen through the lens of the new definition.

    Um. The new definition? It’s new? Really? What is the old definition? How long has it been the definition? What’s the source of the old definition – the one that’s not human biological female?

    Stuff sought an interview with the bill’s sponsor, Jenny Marcroft, but was told she was “unavailable for comment”.

    Supporters of her bill said it was focused on the safety of women in schools, changing rooms, sports and prisons.

    Lawyers who had reviewed the draft legislation said it was questionable whether it would achieve those goals.

    Barrister Graeme Edgeler said that if the bill passed in its current form, it would have little practical effect.

    “Laws you might expect to be affected, for example rules around sex discrimination under the Human Rights Act, just don’t use any of the words the bill actually proposes to define. Nor, for the last 20 years or so, do criminal laws around rape.”

    Erm – what? Criminal laws around rape don’t define women as human biological females? What do they define them as then?

    Edgeler noted that the Human Rights Act already permitted sex-segregated facilities and sex-differentiated sports in New Zealand. “But none of these rules have anything do with the definition of man or woman or male or female.”

    Well then what do these rules mean by sex-segregated facilities and sex-differentiated sports?

    In a legal analysis published last year, public and human rights lawyer Matt McKillop asked whether the bill was a “solution looking for a problem”.

    He considered whether concerns about trans women having access to women’s refuges, bathrooms, prisons and sports teams required law changes which clarified language around sex and gender.

    “I conclude not,” he wrote in Law News. “New Zealand law already permits services or facilities for women in most of these circumstances based on biological sex. The bill would therefore not affect the legal position in those commonly cited circumstances where women might have reasonable concerns about safety and privacy.”

    What? The law recognizes biological sex therefore we should shut up about biological sex? That makes no sense.

    My head hurts.

    H/t Rob

  • Musk increasingly angry

    Musk is angry.

    Elon Musk—showing increasing anger over allegations the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development by his short-lived Department of Government Efficiency had fatal consequences—lashed out at critics on the social platform he owns, even as a number of studies support those claims.

    Musk, in a post on X on Sunday, claimed those who say DOGE’s USAID cuts resulted in deaths “cannot cite a single name of someone who died out of the ‘millions’ they falsely claim have died. Not a single name!”

    They probably can’t describe what clothes they were wearing, either, but how does that change anything?

    New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, who last year identified specific people he says died after USAID-backed services were disrupted, quickly responded with the names of four he said died because of the cuts, including an 8-year-old girl, and suggested the world’s richest person travel to Africa with him to “talk to these moms and dads, and you’ll see the dying children themselves.”

    But he doesn’t want to see them, he wants to keep saying they don’t exist.

    Musk has disputed claims the USAID cuts caused deaths multiple times over the last year: In March 2025, Musk argued “no one has died as a result of a brief pause to do a sanity check on foreign aid funding”…

    So he knows for sure that no one has died as a result of what he says is a brief pause in funding for food programs?

    I really really really doubt that he knows that.

  • And a pony

    Is the ACLU 6 years old?

    What are “trans kids”? Adults who call themselves children?

    What does it mean to say that X people should be able to exist freely, fully, and joyfully? It sounds nice at first blush, but if you pause to think about it it becomes nonsensical. Everyone “should” be able to be [any number of things] but there are often obstacles to being [any number of things]. It’s not just a matter of power or permission or refusal of same, it’s also a matter of reality, ability, chance, history, in short of what is possible and what isn’t. You might as well claim that people should be able to be birds or whales or the solar system.

    Children who claim to be the other sex should be free to play with gender norms, but they aren’t able to be the other sex, and they should be made aware that they should not be free to force their gender fantasies on other people. Soppy blather about living fully and joyfully doesn’t change that.

  • Without interference by the president

    The NY Times stumbles over its own feet.

    Rebecca Slaughter, the former Federal Trade Commission member whose firing was upheld by the Supreme Court on Monday, warned that the justices allowed for the possibility of abuse of presidential power.

    That makes no sense. They mean either “the justices allowed the possibility” or “the justices failed to allow for the possibility”. If they were allowing for the possibility then they wouldn’t have upheld her firing.

    Anyway. The Supreme Court, folks: let the abuse of presidential power commence…or rather continue and intensify.

    Independent agencies like the F.TC. were created to act as watchdogs of powerful corporations, without interference by the president, the former Democratic commissioner said in a statement shortly after the decision was handed down.

    “Today’s ruling makes it possible for presidents to fire watchdogs who won’t put politics over principle, and replace them with lap dogs,” Ms. Slaughter said. “It’s a recipe for corruption; working families will pay the price.”

    The Supreme Court’s 6-to-3 decision in the case, Trump v. Slaughter, effectively gives the president free rein to fire members of more than 20 independent federal agencies, which are typically led by members of both parties. The decision overturned a 90-year-old law restricting presidents from firing officials without cause.

    My first thought was why don’t they realize they’re allowing The Other Team to mess with independent agencies too, and my second thought was they are confident there will never again be an Other Team.

  • He’s taking it well

    The fuming has commenced.

  • Let the fuming commence

    Supreme Court Lets $5 Million Sex Abuse Verdict Against Trump Stand

    The Supreme Court on Monday declined a request by President Trump to review a $5 million civil judgment against him after a jury found in 2023 that he sexually abused and defamed the writer E. Jean Carroll.

    …

    Monday’s decision is a major blow to Mr. Trump, likely marking the end of his legal efforts to contest the jury verdict finding that he assaulted Ms. Carroll in the mid-1990s in a department store dressing room.

    Or maybe not the end of his efforts but the end of his lawyers’ willingness to assist his efforts. He could continue screaming into the wind until he chokes on his last Big Mac.

    In response to the decision, Mr. Trump posted on social media, calling Ms. Carroll’s lawsuit “a Fake Case.” He added that he would “continue the fight against this Weaponization and Lawfare Case against me, including the ridiculous claim of Defamation, with all of my power and strength.”

    Ms. Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta A. Kaplan, said that the decision “affirms once and for all the jury’s unanimous verdict that President Donald J. Trump sexually assaulted and defamed E. Jean Carroll. His multiple efforts to appeal that verdict have all failed, and today’s ruling ends his quest to avoid accountability for his actions.”

    Part of the evidence against him was that notorious “You can grab them by the pussy” remark. One boast too many…

  • Adjudicated rapist

    Finally.

    The rest of Conway’s post:

    The highly respected district judge who tried the case, the Hon. Lewis A. Kaplan, correctly stated multiple times that the jury’s finding of sexual abuse under New York law meant that, in common parlance and under the law of most jurisdictions, Donald Trump was found to have raped E. Jean. So henceforth and forever more, it will be completely accurate—and utterly inactionable under the common and constitutional law of defamation—to state the following fact: DONALD J. TRUMP IS AN ADJUDICATED RAPIST.

  • Despite a Supreme Court ruling

    Defiance.

    NHS hospitals will still allow biological men who are transgender to use female-only wards and lavatories despite a Supreme Court ruling against the practice, The Telegraph can disclose.

    West London NHS Trust has instructed patients that they can use single-sex facilities based on their “legal gender”.

    That’s not what the Supreme Court said but oh well, who cares about silly old laws, eh? Just do whatever you want all the time.

    Critics say the new policy is inconsistent with the Supreme Court’s ruling that the term “sex” in the Equality Act 2010 refers to biological sex. This has been widely interpreted as meaning that people who were born men should not be allowed to use female facilities.

    On account of how female facilities are for female people and men are not female people. How many trillion times do we have to say this before it sinks in?

    Claire Coutinho, the shadow equalities minister, said it was “astonishing that an NHS trust has adopted this unlawful policy”.

    “Biological males must not be allowed into single-sex female spaces, but more than a year on from the Supreme Court ruling, the Government has completely failed to get a grip on public services that are still flouting the law,” she said.

    “Many women and girls in hospital will be particularly vulnerable and need to know that their safety and privacy is being protected. The Health Secretary must demand the immediate withdrawal of this policy, and issue the new national guidance that is more than a year overdue.”

    Oh let’s not be hasty here. It’s only women. How about we go on letting men go wherever they want for now, and maybe we can take another look in a century or two.

    Fiona McAnena, the director of campaigns at Sex Matters, said the policy was “doing everything in its power to circumvent the law on single-sex spaces”.

    “The term ‘legal gender’ has no basis in law or medicine, and it’s extraordinary that NHS bosses at West London think that they can test the law by writing rules using bogus terminology,” she said.

    “A patient or staff member could have a good case if they decided to challenge the trust in court. But it shouldn’t take legal action by individuals for public institutions to ignore demands from trans activists and fulfil their legal obligations.

    “If this policy is permitted to stand, other NHS trusts across the UK may follow suit. The sooner NHS England brings out a revised policy that complies with equality law and protects sex-based rights, the better.”

    How about July 2076? Are you busy that month?