All entries by this author
Jul 27th, 2025 10:17 am |
By Ophelia Benson
The union idennifies as a union but it doesn’t protect the workers the way unions are supposed to do.
https://twitter.com/VioletWhiteG/status/1949399497236226092
It doesn’t come right out and
say our support is for team trans only, but the mawkish wording is all too typical of that particular brand of “support.” The right-thinking people these days see trans people as needing endless declarations of love and support and sympathy and more love, while they see women who know men are not women as The Evil Other needing nothing but rebuke and punishment. I wouldn’t be in a hurry to “share my thoughts” with them.…
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Jul 27th, 2025 8:23 am |
By Ophelia Benson
NPR has further details on the updated Statue of Liberty.
Artist Amy Sherald is canceling an upcoming show of her work at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery. Sherald’s boldly colored portraits documenting the African American experience have graced magazine covers.
She is best known for her painting of Michelle Obama commissioned by the museum.
Amy Sherald: American Sublime was scheduled to be on view at the National Portrait Gallery for five months beginning Sept. 19. Described as “the largest, most comprehensive exhibition of the artist’s work to date,” the exhibition was organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, or SFMOMA, and is currently at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.
Sherald is canceling the show
…
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Jul 27th, 2025 7:59 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Originally a comment by What a Maroon at Miscellany Room.
Sometimes it’s hard to know whose metaphorical bed to jump into. On the one hand, Amy Sherald, the celebrated painter best known for her official portrait of Michelle Obama, has canceled an upcoming exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, citing concerns that the museum might remove an artwork that could further provoke the Trump administration as it seeks to exert control over the Smithsonian Institution.
Sherald and a Smithsonian spokesperson Thursday confirmed that Sherald had withdrawn her exhibition, “American Sublime,” from the museum.
The artist said she had been told that the museum — whose director, Kim Sajet, resigned after President Donald Trump called for her ouster for
…
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Jul 27th, 2025 4:15 am |
By Ophelia Benson
It just keeps getting worse. This one takes the breath away. Daniel Sanderson in The Times:
One of Sandie Peggie’s bosses wanted her to be reported to police for confronting a transgender doctor in a hospital’s female changing rooms.
A male doctor, god damn it. The problem was not “transgender”; the problem was male. Peggie did not want to have to take her clothes off in front of a man.
So anyway – for the crime of not wanting to undress in front of a man, one of Peggie’s bosses thought the police should be called. Not to arrest the man spying on the woman, of course, but to arrest the woman telling the man to get … Read the rest
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Jul 27th, 2025 3:09 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Hunnnnnnnnnh
Do you accept that calling this man a man is likely to cause immense distress?
No, I fucking do not. I think it causes him irritation and vanity-bruising at worst, and more likely a nice little thrill of righteous indignation. Meanwhile, do you accept that bullying women into agreeing with a man who says he’s a woman is harmful to women in general? Because that’s a far less fanciful petulant self-involved claim than his claim of “immense distress”?
I mean come on. He’s an adult. He’s a doctor. Surely he’s expected to have enough resilience and … Read the rest
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Jul 26th, 2025 4:46 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
One minute I compare trans ideology and its coerced beliefs racket to the Catholic church and its coerced belief racket, and the next minute I drop in on twitX and find
WE ARE NOT COMPELLED TO BELIEVE IN THE GODS OF OTHERS.
Those days are over. Our ancestors were so compelled, but we are not. You are not the pope … Read the rest
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Jul 26th, 2025 4:31 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
Yes! Agreed! It’s a religion! And you can’t force us to join or endorse your religion! Those days are over! At least outside the Ummah they are. I don’t believe in your religion, I think it’s harmful and bad and stupid, now go away.
Also, of course, it’s an idiotic analogy. Mr Pope is one guy, the monarch of one religion. We’re free to ignore him and his religion. Even his neighbors in Rome are free to ignore him. That hasn’t always been true but it sure as hell is now. The Catholic church is a horrific institution and it still has its claws in … Read the rest
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7 comments
Jul 26th, 2025 11:45 am |
By Ophelia Benson
The Daily Mirror:
OAP wife who repeatedly slashed husband with Samurai sword ‘had no choice’
Joanna Rowland-Stuart, 71, repeated slashed husband Andrew, 69, to death with the Samuari sword she’d bought in the 1980s at their 15th floor Brighton flat.
…
Joanna Rowland-Stuart, 71, had been deemed “unfit to plead” to the murder of her husband Andrew, 69, in their 15th-floor flat in Brighton, on May 27 last year. She appeared in front of a jury at Lewes Crown Court for a trial of the act which decides if someone physically committed a crime, rather than their intent.
The BBC:
Transgender woman, 71, killed partner, jury finds
A jury has found that a transgender woman killed her partner.
…
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Jul 26th, 2025 10:29 am |
By Ophelia Benson
This is a very very very important point.
You have to have a degree in Bullshit Studies before you can say that Bullshit Studies is bullshit.
Nah. An ideology whose foundation is an absurd lie can be tossed in the Bullshit Bin without further ado.… Read the rest
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7 comments
Jul 26th, 2025 9:20 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Helen Webberley is letting us know how much contempt she has for women.
https://twitter.com/HelenWebberley/status/1949008949908246567
I tell you what, I wouldn’t want to be alone in a room with her. That’s some scary ragey contempt right there.… Read the rest
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4 comments
Jul 25th, 2025 4:13 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
The Scotsman:
A war of words over pronouns broke out at the ongoing employment tribunal between nurse Sandie Peggie and trans doctor Beth Upton.
That is, male doctor “Beth” Upton who identifies as female. The journalistic surrender makes it impossible for reporters to write clearly and truthfully about this subject.
Ms Peggie’s lawyer Naomi Cunningham was accused by NHS Fife’s legal team of being “offensive” by referring to Dr Upton as a man and told she must use “appropriate language”.
But the fact that he is a man playacting being a woman is at the core of the whole tribunal. It’s just ludicrous to try to force opposing counsel to prop up the very lie that the tribunal is … Read the rest
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Jul 25th, 2025 6:28 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Boswell Today reports:
At the centre of today’s testimony was a simple, disquieting question: could the notes that formed the basis of allegations against Sandie Peggie have ever existed as described? The tribunal heard from two digital forensic experts – Peter Donaldson and Jim Borwick – who, despite differing styles, reached a chilling consensus: the data doesn’t add up.
Peter Donaldson was the first to fold. Pressed on the chronological ordering of Google Keep notes – particularly a now-infamous “weird incident” entry from August – he conceded he could not confirm that the note appeared in the position it did by creation date. Screenshots showed one thing; Google metadata suggested another. Donaldson couldn’t verify which notes were original or
…
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Jul 25th, 2025 5:37 am |
By Ophelia Benson
The Telegraph raises an eyebrow at the “safe with me” campaign.
A BBC presenter has provoked a row over a scheme to help transgender people access lavatories in schools. Dr Ronx Ikharia, a “black, queer, transmasculine, non-binary” medical doctor who has hosted children’s shows for the BBC, is behind the new “trans allyship” scheme.
It will distribute bright yellow “trans allies” badges to schools which state “Safe With Me”. Those wearing the badges will be expected to help “accompany trans+ people to their preferred facilities if asked”.
In other words, “those wearing the badges” will be children who will be expected to help protect “trans+ people” to use the wrong toilets. The doctor’s fun scheme is to tell children… Read the rest
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9 comments
Jul 24th, 2025 5:40 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
The Herald on today in court:
A number of rows erupted between the legal team’s during Thursday’s hearing.
The first occurred after Ms Russell KC objected to Dr Upton being referred to as “he” by Ms Cunningham. The NHS Fife lawyer argued that it had caused the witness, Ms Glancey, to use the term “he” in her evidence, quickly following it up with “sorry, she”.
Ms Cunningham has consistently referred to Dr Upton using he/him pronouns throughout this whole tribunal.
It’s still so bizarre to see grown-up people in a courtroom demanding that everyone lie about what sex people are. Upton is a he. Furthermore, that’s what the case is about. It’s both absurd and outrageous that Team Upton … Read the rest
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Jul 24th, 2025 11:33 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Circle circle circle
Using male pronouns to refer to a transgender doctor who used a hospital’s female changing room is “offensive”, a tribunal heard.
Stupid Telegraph left out the “male” part, thus making its own lede confusing instead of informative. The “transgender doctor” is a male transgender doctor. The Telegraph reports on the brutally enforced taboo on calling males males by refusing to call a male a male. Nice going.
Jane Russell KC, Dr Beth Upton’s lawyer, argued that nurse Sandie Peggie’s legal team were “confusing” those giving evidence in the tribunal by referring to the doctor as “he” and “him”.
Ms Russell claimed the witnesses in the case, which centres on the medic’s use of a women’s hospital changing
…
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Jul 24th, 2025 10:57 am |
By Ophelia Benson
So it turns out it was a systematic stich up. Boswell Today:
It began with an email. On 29 December 2023, just hours after a fraught exchange in the women’s changing room, Dr. Kate Searle sent a message to every consultant in the Emergency Department. Sandie Peggie, the nurse who had asked Dr. Beth Upton why he was changing clothes in a female-only space, was portrayed in that email as the aggressor. Searle thanked DU for his “composure” and suggested that other, unspecified incidents involving Peggie existed. No such incidents had ever been formally recorded.
Today at the tribunal, cross-examination dismantled the scaffolding on which this claim was built. Naomi Cunningham methodically unpicked the story of a so-called “log”
…
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