Author: Ophelia Benson

  • 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?

    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?

  • Yet you persist

    Oooh look, I bagged one.

  • The chimes at midnight

    Trump rants and rages about a book he hasn’t read.

    Trump unleashed a lengthy attack on journalist Maggie Haberman at midnight Saturday over a new book about him, dismissing the work as fiction and hurling insults at the New York Times reporter who has covered him for years.

    In a post on Truth Social, Trump said he had been briefed on the book and was unimpressed, deriding both the project and its author — whose name he mangled throughout the post.

    “Based on a very quick and boring briefing concerning the Magot Hagerman book about me, it is mostly made up, Fake News, largely fiction, as have been most of the things she has written about me for so many years,” Trump wrote.

    He’s so stupid he tells us he hasn’t read it and proceeds to trash it without having read it. He informs us that he’s so lazy and dim-witted he gets people to give him “briefings” on books because ew, so many pages, so many black squiggles on white paper. The man is functionally illiterate.

  • A profound failure

    Nick Wallis on the BBC’s coverage of trans issues:

    Just over a week ago, the BBC quietly acknowledged a profound failure of journalism in one of its online news reports. The apology ostensibly focused on a single crime story, but its detail and length appears to signify a cultural shift in an area which has been tearing the BBC apart for more than a decade. 

    The story concerned a 21-year-old man called Darren Rigby who had indicated he was preparing to act on his apparent murderous hatred of women and girls. Over the course of a week, in January this year, Rigby sent terrifying messages to three all-girls schools on Merseyside. Rigby told one: “I am on my way… with a revolver and a machete and I’m going to shoot and stab all of your girls. You terfs are going to learn to stop mocking, deadnaming and misgendering transwomen like me.” Terf stands for “trans-exclusionary radical feminist”, a derogatory term for women who do not accept that biological males can be women.

    In another email, Rigby said his intention was “to injure and kill as many girls as I can”.

    There was a trial; he confessed to three charges of sending communications threatening death or serious harm. There was a BBC reporter at the trial.

    Despite the newsworthiness of the details revealed in court, the BBC’s write-up of Rigby’s crimes ignored Rigby’s self-declared trans status. His apparent motive, so-called terfs “misgendering” him, was not mentioned. The article didn’t even make clear that Rigby’s violent threats were aimed exclusively at women and girls in single-sex schools.

    Um…an unfortunate oversight. He wasn’t feeling 100% that day. He couldn’t find his pencil.

    The omissions [might] have gone unnoticed were it not for another journalist sitting in court that day. Jamie Lopez, who writes for an online publication called The Southport Lead, published his piece on Rigby’s sentencing two days after the BBC. It contained all the details the BBC piece had left out. Lopez was mystified by the BBC’s take on the story. “It had gone up very quickly,” he told me, but the content was “bizarre”. The disparity between the articles was soon highlighted on social media and complaints were made.

    On June 17, significant changes were made to the BBC report. Quotes from Rigby’s emails were added. His targeting of all-girls schools was recorded. The formal BBC apology written below the “updated” report noted: “This article was originally published without including key details about this case due to miscommunication between BBC reporters in court and the writers.”

    That’s quite the “miscommunication”. You’d think those key details would be key enough to report.

    One journalist working in BBC national radio complains that they are “still stuck with the chilling effect” of the complaints unit ruling against Justin Webb for explaining that “trans women” were “males” and Martine Croxall for rolling her eyes at the words “pregnant people” in a script. “We still need unambiguous messaging that restores proper public-service journalism,” the journalist said.

    Indeed they do.

  • Trying to go out in a bra and camisole

    Classic.

    “if I try to go out in a bra and camisole with eyeliner”

    WHY WOULD ANYONE go out in a bra and camisole with eyeliner?

    The answer is obvious: to attract sexual attention. It’s not neutral, it’s not just what one wears to go out, it’s not comfortable or practical or simple, it’s signaling. It’s signaling a certain kind of alluring sexy hot girl look at me vibe. It’s stupid enough when women do it; it’s cosmic stupid when men do it.

  • Discovery cuts both ways

    MeidasTouch writes:

    TOTAL BACKFIRE: BBC makes Trump PAY for $10 BILLION defamation lawsuit.

    Trump just opened the door to discovery over his actions around January 6th, and the BBC decided to walk right through it.

    Donald Trump sued the BBC for $10 billion over its coverage of January 6. Now, the BBC is making it clear that discovery cuts both ways.

    The broadcaster has asked the court to require Trump to turn over his phone records, private schedules, daily diaries, and other communications spanning the period from the 2020 election through January 20, 2021.

    The BBC argues that if Trump claims its reporting damaged his reputation, then the facts surrounding January 6 are directly relevant. In other words, they’re asking whether Trump’s reputation was harmed by the BBC, or by his own conduct surrounding the Capitol attack.

    Gosh, that’s a tough one, isn’t it. No, it isn’t. Yes, it was his own conduct that harmed his reputation. The fact that the American people in their wisdom re-elected him anyway is a separate matter.

    Trump’s lawyers are accusing the BBC of trying to turn the defamation lawsuit into a January 6 trial. But that’s how discovery works: when you file a lawsuit seeking billions in damages, you open the door to scrutiny of the claims you’re making.

    Trump wanted a $10 billion payday. Instead, his lawsuit could force him to produce records that shine a new spotlight on one of the darkest chapters in presidential history.

    Let’s fucking hope so.

  • It was a comment piece

    Euan Weddell aka Sophie Molly lost.

    1. Sophie Molly complained to the Independent Press Standards Organisation that The Sunday Times breached Clause 1 (Accuracy), Clause 3 (Harassment) and Clause 12 (Discrimination) of the Editors’ Code of Practice in an article headlined “How the ex-Green stole Christmas”, published on 21 December 2025.

    2. The article – which appeared on page 12 – was a comment piece which commented on a Christmas card that had been withdrawn from sale. The card reportedly said: “This Christmas I’m identifying as a Grinch”. The article said, “Here’s how censorship happens” and a “lunatic objects to the card, saying it ‘belittles the identity of trans and non-binary people’. Sainsbury’s immediately removes the card from sale and issues a cringing apology stressing how inclusive it is.” The article went on to say: “There is no evidence to suggest that anyone in the country was remotely disquieted by the card except for the lunatic, a bloke called ‘Sophie Molly’, who was considered too extreme for the Green Party. But Mr Molly gets his way, because that’s how it works.”

    That’s how it works because for some unfathomable reason, the fad known as “being trans” is currently seen and approached as the most vulnerable and wounded and deserving of every sympathy and assistance and a pony.

    The article under complaint appeared within a larger column where the columnist expressed his views on a number of subjects. It said:

    “We have had three centuries of congenital idiots deciding who should run the country and our local authorities, and the result of the last general election must have made it clear to Sir Keir Starmer that the public had, through its electoral lunacy, lost the right to decide who was in charge henceforth. ‘We got a landslide. And some people even voted for Ed Davey. Goes to show the electorate has completely lost its marbles, so no more elections,’ said someone who identified as a spokesperson for Labour but actually isn’t one and is instead me.”

    4. It also said: “These days when one of them says, ‘Mice can easily be taught to play the cello,’ or, ‘Manchester is only seven miles from London, as the crow flies,’ or ‘Anybody can have a cervix’, I just smile benignly, say, ‘How very right you are,’ and let them get on with it.”

    7. The complainant was the individual referenced in the article. She said the article breached Clause 1 as it was inaccurate to refer to her as a “bloke” and “Mr Molly” as she is a woman. She also said it was inaccurate to refer to her as a “lunatic”.

    He said. He said the article blah blah blah. And of course he’s wrong: he is a bloke and he is at the very least chaotic and fanciful in the things he says. I would put it more strongly but I don’t want to be extradited and forced to argue with him in person.

    8. The complainant also said the article breached Clause 12 as it referred to her as a “bloke” and “Mr Molly”, which she considered to be a pejorative and prejudicial reference to her gender identity.

    He can consider things to be whatever he likes, but he doesn’t get to force everyone else to agree. That applies to pretty much anything he could say, because it’s all likely to be wrong.

    In addition, she said referring to her as a “lunatic” was a prejudicial reference towards her protected characteristics. She said it implied she was mentally ill, as she is a trans woman. She also believed the term was misogynistic and a pejorative reference to her disability.

    Well, there again – he acts lunatically, so what can he expect? If you want to be seen as not a lunatic, don’t carry on in public as if you were wearing a billboard with LUNATIC on both sides in bright orange lettering.

  • All-caps don’t make it so

    Retake 10th grade history.

    Not true. Not even close to true.

  • Self is all they can see

    Missing the obvious much?

    Aki doesn’t want to get raped but doesn’t pause to consider the fact that putting men in women’s prisons makes women vulnerable to rape.