Author: Ophelia Benson

  • Maybe she’s a frog?

    Nice title.

    I can’t even be sure of my own sex, equalities officer tells tribunal

    An equalities officer who advised that a transgender doctor should be allowed to use a hospital’s female changing room has said she cannot be sure of her own biological sex.

    Isla Bumba told an employment tribunal that the definition of biological sex was “far more complex” than whether someone had a male or female body.

    She is very young, she is NHS Fife’s equality and human rights lead officer, and she is paid far more than Sandie Peggie is.

    Ms Bumba also told the tribunal, brought by nurse Sandie Peggie, that she did not need to “know anything” about the body of Dr Beth Upton, who was born male, before advising that the medic should be given access to the female changing room.

    So the body is wholly irrelevant is it? The fact that Upton is huge and Peggie is not just doesn’t matter? Upton’s genitalia don’t matter? And this state of affairs is our new utopia?

    Transgender women presented less of a threat to females than ordinary men, she argued, saying the only case she was aware of that suggested otherwise was that of the trans rapist Isla Bryson.

    No no no, Bryson is not a trans rapist, he’s a real rapist. He’s a real rapist who claims to be a woman, adding insult to injury yet again.

    Ms Bumba said she sought guidance from other health boards about their practices before she issued the advice about Dr Upton, as NHS Fife did not have a policy. She said there was a “pretty wide consensus” that trans staff should be allowed to use facilities that aligned with their self-identified gender.

    However, she admitted that she had not considered the Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992, which state that separate communal changing and lavatory facilities must be provided for male and female workers.

    Well of course she hadn’t. 1992!! Be serious. You might as well expect her to consider regulations from 1892.

    Pressed by Ms Cunningham that she had denied biological women a “genuine single-sex space for changing”, Ms Bumba said: “I’m not sure I agree with your definition of biological sex in that sense. I think you’ve simplified what could be deemed biological sex, but in actual fact, it’s far more complex.”

    So it’s not biological sex, it’s something far more complex than that? Which would be…what? Exactly?

  • John and Ted and Donny and Alice

    If you’re going to tell silly braggy lies about yourself and your relatives, at least don’t include details that make the fictionality obvious.

    On Tuesday, Trump conjured an especially odd imaginary tale – that linked his uncle with the late terrorist Theodore “Ted” Kaczynski, better known as the Unabomber.

    Trump was speaking at a Pennsylvania event about energy and innovation when he said he had to “brag just for a second” about his uncle’s intelligence. After wrongly saying his uncle was “the longest-serving professor in the history of MIT” (he was one of the longest-serving but not the very longest) and wrongly saying his uncle’s three university degrees were “in nuclear, chemical, and math” (two were in electrical engineering and one was in physics), the president claimed, “Kaczynski was one of his students.”

    But of course he wasn’t, but before we get to that, let me just sigh heavily about that “having to” yammer about his uncle yet again when he’s done it before and been laughed at for doing it, and when it’s just a tedious windbag story of the kind that tedious windbags tell. I hate tedious windbaggery – guys (it’s always guys) who think they’re great story-tellers, and go into story-telling mode in the middle of what could have been a normal conversation. I’ve known a few, and they bring me out in a rash. Trump is like the Platonic essence of that guy.

    (I think I’ve said all this before, in reaction to a similar Great Storyteller act of Trump’s from Season 1, so that makes me a bit of a tedious windbag too, but at least I’m not doing it live onstage.)

    He went on to tell a story about having asked his uncle about what Kaczynski was like. “‘I said, ‘What kind of a student was he, Uncle John?’ Dr. John Trump. I said, ‘What kind of a student?’ And then he said, ‘Seriously, good.’ He said, ‘He’d correct – he’d go around correcting everybody.’ But it didn’t work out too well for him.”

    But that’s all horseshit.

    First, the president’s uncle died in 1985. Kaczynski was publicly revealed as the Unabomber more than a decade later, in 1996, when he was captured; before that, he had lived as a recluse in the Montana wilderness. There is no apparent reason that Donald Trump would have been asking anyone about Kaczynski in 1985 or earlier.

    Second, Kaczynski attended Harvard University and the University of Michigan, not MIT. 

    Apart from that it’s all very plausible.

    The White House did not respond to a request for comment on the president’s tale.

    Gee I wonder why.

  • Not a peep

    Wait, there’s a thing here.

    From the hearing today:

    Ms Peggie’s lawyer Naomi Cunningham later quizzed Ms Bumba over whether she had stated in guidance to NHS Fife that the nurse had the right to be gender critical.

    She said she was “100% certain” she had done this.

    The lawyer said Ms Bumba’s advice was inclusive of trans people but not women who would not want to share changing facilities with them, citing women who had been sexually assaulted or had religious beliefs.

    And hey you know what? We just don’t want to, for a host of reasons, derived from a lifetime of being seen and treated as inferior in some way, by the media and the entertainment industry and by people we know and by ancient habits and the list is endless. We are on the back foot in relation to men, and we just don’t want to be forced to cuddle up with men in situations where we just don’t get to say no or walk away. We just don’t want to.

    [Cunningham] accused Ms Bumba and NHS Fife of validating trans staff but sacrificing “the privacy, dignity and safety” of women in the process, which [Bumba] denied.

    Ms Bumba said no women had raised concerns with her over trans staff sharing the changing facilities.

    No of course they fucking didn’t. This is the thing I mentioned in the first paragraph. No of course they didn’t raise concerns with her, because they didn’t dare. They live in this suffocating atmosphere of Don’t You Dare that we all live in, and have lived in for ten years or more. We know what we’re not allowed to say, we know what the Isla Bumbas of the world will do to us if we say something else, we know we are not free to say no. Of course they didn’t “raise concerns” with her, just as a swimmer doesn’t “raise concerns” with that shark over there when there’s no rescue boat in sight. They didn’t raise concerns with her because they didn’t want her ruining their lives.

  • Admit nothing

    Fake official.

    Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem claimed Sunday that reports that she’d kneecapped FEMA’s response to the deadly flooding in Texas were “fake news.”

    During an appearance on NBC News’s Meet the Press, host Kristen Welker asked Noem to respond to a New York Times report that found thousands of calls for assistance from flood victims to FEMA call centers went unanswered because the secretary had failed to renew contracts to keep call center employees in place until nearly a week later.

    “Why did it take so long to extend those contracts?” Welker asked.

    “It’s just false. Those contracts were in place. Nobody—no employees were off of work. Every one of them were answering calls. So false reporting, fake news,” Noem said.

    She says, lying through her teeth.

    “Just to be very clear, on July 7, 15.9 percent of calls were answered,” Welker pressed. “I mean, does that concern you that only 15 percent of calls were answered? These are people in a desperate state, FEMA often the first call that they make. Only 15 percent were answered on July 7, several days after the floods?”

    But Noem wouldn’t hear it.

    “That report needs to be valid-ified,” she said. “I’m not certain it’s accurate, and I’m not sure where it came from. And the individuals who are giving you information out of FEMA, I’d love to have them put their names behind it. Because, the anonymous attacks to polit-ili-cize the situation is completely wrong.”

    …

    This isn’t the first report that Noem botched the response to the flooding in Texas. Noem reportedly delayed FEMA’s initial response by instituting a policy that required her to personally sign off on all DHS expenditures exceeding $100,000. FEMA officials, who were unaware of the new rule, didn’t receive Noem’s go-ahead until Monday, at which point floodwaters had been raging for more than 72 hours. Meanwhile, she posted on Instagram asking her followers to vote for their favorite portrait of her to be used as her official governor’s portrait.

    How tasteful.

  • True to its values

    But you don’t. You say you do but you don’t.

    A chief constable’s decision to allow uniformed police officers to take part in a Pride march was unlawful, a judge has ruled.

    A case was brought against Northumbria Police Chief Constable Vanessa Jardine by Lindsey Smith, from Newcastle, who describes herself as “gender critical”. Ms Smith argued Mrs Jardine and her officers’ participation in Newcastle Pride last year meant they would have been unable to remain impartial if a dispute between those with similar beliefs and trans rights supporters had occurred.

    The force said it would work through the ruling to understand the implications but would remain true to its values of “fairness, visibility, and support for all”.

    But those are not your values. You don’t promote fairness, visibility, and support for all. You ignore women, and you also promote visibility and support for people who are energetically bullying and replacing and insulting women. You don’t get to say you support fairness for all, because you don’t.

    By the way, women are half of people, and all of the gestators of people.

    The force said participating in Pride allowed it to be visible in the LGBT community.

    It said the chief constable believed the its participation in Pride was one way to demonstrate “the stigma which has traditionally afflicted members of the LGBT+ community will not be reflected” in the community’s interactions with police.

    Ok but what about other kinds of people who are afflicted by stigma?

  • Tantrum

    Trump is such a difficult guest/roommate/colleague/friend.

    Trump is accusing some of his onetime supporters of being “weaklings” who are falling prey to Democratic “bullshit” about the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein — concluding that he no longer wants their support.

    The message was the clearest sign yet of the cracks emerging in the president’s coalition, many of whom are loudly demanding more information about the disgraced financier, who has been subject to myriad conspiracies since his death by suicide in 2019. And some of his allies don’t appear to be listening, with Republicans in Congress taking steps Wednesday morning to potentially force the Justice Department to release more documents.

    How is this possible when the dictator specifically told them not to?

    “Their new SCAM is what we will forever call the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax, and my PAST supporters have bought into this ‘bullshit,’ hook, line, and sinker,” Trump wrote in a missive on Truth Social. “They haven’t learned their lesson, and probably never will, even after being conned by the Lunatic Left for 8 long years.”

    Ouch! That’s how he talks to his fans? I don’t know about you but I would be quite offended, and would demand a refund.

    “I have had more success in 6 months than perhaps any President in our Country’s history, and all these people want to talk about, with strong prodding by the Fake News and the success starved Dems, is the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax,” he wrote. “Let these weaklings continue forward and do the Democrats work, don’t even think about talking of our incredible and unprecedented success, because I don’t want their support anymore!”

    I don’t want it any more! You ruined it! You ruined everything! I hate you! I’m never talking to you again! Never never never never!!!

  • His dignity, not hers

    Sigh.

  • Guest post: Typical transperbole

    Originally a comment by maddog on A lemon by any other name.

    Where to begin?

    1. He talks with his hands. They never stop moving. He must be very distracting, not to say annoying, in a courtroom setting.

    2. What is he wearing? A blazer over his undershirt?

    3. “The UK Supreme Court ruled that the term ‘sex’ in the Equality Act must mean biological sex, even though ‘bioligical’ is not written into the Act.”

    Well, duh. Statutory construction, how does it work? Of course, if the Act had made that clear in the first place, we wouldn’t have had all the silliness of men taking over everything from women under the johnny-come-lately doctrine of “transgenderism.” It wasn’t made explicit in the Act for the simple reason that nobody thought it would have to be said, that everyone knows what “sex” means, and nobody anticipated the perversion of ordinary language so successfully achieved by the trans lobby. If “biological” had been included in the statutory language, there would not have been the need to litigate what the statute means. But interpreting statutes is what courts DO. You, of all people, as a barrister, should know that. The trans lobby created “ambiguity” where there really was no cause to do so, and thus brought upon themselves the necessity of litigation to declare the proper meaning of the statute. Trans activists have only themselves to blame for this result.

    4. The EHRC interim guidance “effectively exclud[es] trans people from single-sex spaces, denying them privacy . . . ”

    No, it doesn’t, you liar. The guidance makes clear — as trans activists shout so vociferously when it suits their purposes — that sex and gender are not the same thing. Single-sex spaces are single SEX, without regard to anyone’s gender identity. It doesn’t stop anyone from claiming any gender identity they want. It’s just that the relevant criterion is biological sex, so use the facilities for your sex. So-called trans women can be that gender identity to their hearts’ content, and still use the single-sex facility for their biological sex.

    As to denying trans people’s “right to privacy,” trans identified men in men’s spaces, and trans identified women in women’s spaces, will have as much privacy for their intimate functions as any other man or woman in the appropriate sex-segregated space. But that’s not what they really mean. What they want is for no one to be able to notice or remark on their actual sex. It’s like their being “transgender” is some kind of state secret. It’s not. If you are out and about in public, it is usually pretty obvious what your sex is, particularly if you are a man, no matter what you wear or how made up you are. (Heh: made up. Snerk.) That’s the one that matters the most: for women to be protected from the men, and to know who the men are. Women are peculiarly vulnerable to male violence, with potential consequences that no men ever have to face.

    5. “. . . and erasing intersex identities.”

    Another lie. Quelle surprise.

    For one thing, trans dogmatists insist on using the incorrect term, “intersex,” rather than “disorders of sex development,” or DSDs. They do this deliberately to muddy the waters, to pretend that there is such a thing as a “spectrum” of sexes. “Intersex” individuals presumably lie on some continuum between the endpoints of “male” or “female.” T advocates thus make people with DSDs pawns in their fight, even though DSDs have nothing to do with transgenderism. DSDs happen to people who are one sex or the other (not both; not “in between”), but something in their genetic makeup has interfered with normal development of the reproductive pathway for whichever sex their body is.

    For another thing, having a DSD is not a “gender identity.” DSDs are objectively observable and ascertainable medical conditions. Sometimes there will be no reason to suspect the existence of a DSD until puberty. But the undeniable physiological changes wrought by puberty can be scientifically examined, and the existence of a DSD condition can be either ruled out or confirmed.

    It just goes to show that the trans lobby will involuntarily co-opt anyone and anything to their cause, if it will serve their purposes. TAs are users, with no regard to the desires and feelings of others. Many people with DSDs wish the trans lobby would leave them alone, and not use them as a political football. TAs don’t care.

    By and large, the people who claim to be “transgender” do not have any DSDs, and have perfectly normal male or female reproductive systems. So the “what about Intersex?” gambit is a non-starter. It is irrelevant.

    6. The Supreme Court ruling supposedly “follows the ninth pattern of genocide: denial of identity.”

    What are these numbered “patterns of genocide”? What is the evidence that substantiates the relation of any such “patterns” to the practice of “genocide”? How many of these ” patterns” does it take to ascertain whether there is any “genocide” being contemplated or carried out? Is one sufficient? It doesn’t seem so.

    The only people denying anyone’s “identity” are the trans activists themselves. They are denying the existence of the manifestly observable sex of their own bodies, in favor of fantasies about being the sex that they actually are not. Trans activists also deny the identity of women as an oppressed class on the basis of their sex.

    Why are you talking about “genocide”? The -cide suffix has to do with killing. HomiCIDE is the killing of a human being (“homo” = human). ParriCIDE is the killing of a father (“parri” = “patri-” = father). SuiCIDE is the killing of oneself (“sui” = self). Where is the killing in this supposed “genocide”? AFAICT, no one has been killed, is being killed, or is contemplated to be killed. Without any killing, past, present, or future, how can there be a “genocide”? Methinks he doth protest too much. All that’s happening is that transgender people have to abide by sex classifications, where sex is the relevant consideration. It doesn’t stop them being “trans” at all. It just makes them do their cosplay in the bathrooms, locker rooms, changing rooms, hospital wards, prisons, etc. , for their sex. So why is anyone, Lemkin Institute or nonbinary barrister Oscar Davies, yammering on about “genocide”?

    7. The Lemkin Institute is alarmed by government rules that demonstrate intentional erasure, and hostile media framing of transgender people as “other.” That’s evidently the mechanics of the “ninth pattern of genocide.” “When you force people out of bathrooms, you’re cutting away at the right to exist themselves.”

    Oscar, Oscar, Oscar.

    No one is being ” forced out of [all] bathrooms,” such that they don’t have ” a right to exist themselves.” No one is “cutting away at” the right of trans people to exist. Go right ahead and express your “gender identity” — whatever that may mean — however, and however much, you like. No one is stopping you or saying you can’t. Just, when it comes to bathrooms and other things classified by sex, stick to the ones for your sex. Pretty simple.

    8. “When genocide prevention experts raise a red flag, you don’t debate semantics. You stop, you reflect, and you act.”

    For crying out loud. What makes anyone a “genocide prevention expert”? How do you know this Lemkin Institute has any “genocide prevention” expertise? I’m not impressed. Neither the Lemkin Institute nor you seems to know what “genocide” even means. There’s no killing going on, nor any prospect on the horizon. No genocide. The “red flag” in this case is utterly baseless. It’s Chicken Little, screaming about a disaster that isn’t happening and isn’t going to happen. It’s typical transperbole: if a trans person doesn’t get their way, it’s oppression and literal violence. Get real.

    Yes, we noted the false red flag. We stopped, and we reflected on the claims being made. They are bogus. So we continue to act: to restore women’s sex-based rights, and to safeguard children from dangerous interventions.

  • No mention of them

    A bit more on the two people who idennify as an institute:

    Their Ukraine project sounds decent enough, but it’s still at least deceptive for one or two people to idennify as an institute.

    H/t Piglet for the Bellingcat tip.

  • Using the Lemkin name

    From last November, The Algemeiner on the trickery of the bogus “Lemkin Institute”:

    Members of the family of Raphael Lemkin, a Jewish lawyer who coined the term “genocide” and pushed for the passage of the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, say they are outraged that a Pennsylvania-based nonprofit organization is using the Lemkin name to pursue an agenda of extreme anti-Israel activism.

    The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention was initially registered as a Pennsylvania nonprofit corporation on Aug. 19, 2021, and won US federal tax-exempt recognition in September 2023. In recent months, it has veered into strident anti-Israel political advocacy, supporting anti-Israel campus protests and reaching millions of viewers with social media posts that falsely accuse Israel of genocide.

    Less than one week after the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel last Oct. 7, the institute released a “genocide alert” calling the onslaught an “unprecedented military operation against Israel” while decrying the Jewish state’s actions against Hamas as “genocide.” The Oct. 13 message came before Israeli launched its ground offensive in Gaza.

    …

    Joseph Lemkin, a New Jersey lawyer who is related to Raphael Lemkin, said he was unfamiliar with the institute until being informed of it by The Algemeiner.

    Lemkin, who represented the family at a UN event marking the 65th anniversary of the genocide convention, described himself as “totally outraged” to see his late relative’s name used to push an anti-Israel agenda. His father was Raphael Lemkin’s first cousin.

    Whatever you think about Israel v Hamas or Hamas v Israel, it’s clear that the “Lemkin Institute” has zero actual connection to Raphael Lemkin and is exploiting his name in a particularly revolting way.

    H/t Piglet

  • The temple totters

    And that’s not even the end of it.

    Two topples in one day!

  • Cleared of all charges

    For once I’m glad to have woken up in the middle of the night.

    Sandie Peggie cleared of gross misconduct allegations

    NHS Fife has cleared the nurse at the centre of a high-profile tribunal case of all disciplinary charges.

    Sandie Peggie was being investigated by the health board after Dr Beth Upton, a trans woman doctor, accused her of a “hate incident” and patient safety breaches following a confrontation in a changing room at Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy.

    News of the outcome of the internal investigation came just hours before Ms Peggie’s Employment Tribunal against the health board and Dr Upton is due to resume.

    In a statement, Ms Peggie’s solicitor, Margaret Gribbon, said: “On Tuesday July 14, the evening before the resuming of her tribunal, Sandie Peggie received confirmation from Fife Health Board that, following a disciplinary hearing, none of the gross misconduct allegations against her were upheld.

    “This follows a disciplinary hearing on June 25, which considered four gross misconduct allegations: two relating to patient care failures, one of ‘misgendering’ Dr Upton, and one relating to her encounter with Dr Upton in the workplace female-only changing room on Christmas Eve 2023.

    “Sandie is relieved and delighted that this 18-month-long internal process has concluded and cleared her of all allegations.”

    She’ll never get those horrible 18 months back though.

  • A lemon by any other name

    Yet another buffoon yammering about the “Lemkin Institute” as if it were Amnesty International. It’s a guy with a laptop. That’s it. It has no significance.

    Oscar prattles away about being nonbyenuree as if anyone cared. If you need a barrister, don’t pick him.

  • No new fondness

    Ok now Trump is pissed off. He thought he and Volodya were buddies. Of course he did: being both vain and stupid made it inevitable.

    Trump did not develop a new fondness for Ukraine or its president, Volodymyr Zelensky. He did not abruptly become a believer in the traditional transatlantic alliances prized by his predecessors as a counterweight to Moscow. Rather, Trump got insulted.

    By ignoring Trump’s pleas to end the war and instead ratcheting up the fighting, Putin has made Trump look like the junior partner in the relationship. The Russian leader has “really overplayed his hand,” one of the officials told me. “The president has given him chance after chance, but enough is enough.”

    Yeah! Pretty soon he’s just another fella around here!

    Trump and Putin have spoken a half dozen times in the past six months, and Trump has grown steadily more frustrated, the four people told me. He told advisers this spring that he was beginning to think Putin didn’t want the war to end, an assessment that U.S. intelligence agencies reached more than a year ago.

    Bahahahahahahaha oh god that’s like a punchline to a very stale joke. “Why Adolf, I’m beginning to think you don’t like Jews. Why Niagara River, I’m beginning to think you have a slight drop-off here. Why Arizona, I’m beginning to think you have a bit of a ditch north of Flagstaff.”

    When Trump recently intensified his calls for a cease-fire—at one point writing on social media, “Vladimir, STOP!”—Putin chose to defy him by escalating attacks on Ukraine yet again.

    You astonish me. How could Putin ignore something as official and heartfelt as “Vladimir, STOP!” on social media?

    With Putin continuing to ignore his pleas for a deal, Trump has felt humiliated, fearing that he appears weak

    YA THINK???

    “I speak to him a lot about getting this thing done. And then I hang up and say, ‘That was a nice phone call,’ and the missiles are launched into Kyiv or some other city,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office today, referring to Putin. “And then after that happens three or four times, you say the talk doesn’t mean anything.”

    Oh come on now, mustn’t be hasty. Make it twenty times. Make it fifty. Show them how generous and patient you really are.

  • It’s always the woman who says no

    Suzanne Moore on the Sandie Peggie tribunal:

    [Dr “Beth”] Upton had begun transitioning in 2022 but claimed to be both “distressed” and “afraid”. If you’ve ever been physically assaulted or intimidated, you’ll know what it’s like to truly feel that way. But Peggie is small – and Upton is certainly not.

    I have been, and I do know. Peggie is small and Upton is huge, plus he has the Trans Army behind him. I don’t believe for a second that he felt distressed or afraid. My bet is on sadistic glee.

    Nevertheless, Peggie was suspended by her managers and faced a disciplinary hearing. Somehow, in these cases, it’s always the woman who says no who ends up being portrayed as threatening and bullying. The gender cult demands unquestioning acceptance of the idea that trans people are always victims.

    Along with the idea that they are always more “marginalized” and persecuted and intimidated and bullied and yadda yadda than women are. It’s a core part of the Steal Everything approach to women that makes trans dogma such fun.

    NHS Fife wanted to keep this quiet. Understandably. They sought to keep Upton anonymous and have the upcoming hearing held in private. Neither of these things happened, which is just as well, because what’s being exposed is a muddle of mismanagement and deep stupidity.

    The board of NHS Fife also did not want to disclose how much this has all cost, but they have been forced to: £220,000 up until the adjournment in February. Another 11 days of hearings could push costs up towards £1 million. The taxpayer, remember, is paying for both Upton’s and NHS Fife’s defence.

    The socialism of huge men in skirts.

    Currently we are in a situation where many of our institutions are so immersed in gender ideology that they cannot respond to the actual needs of women. Or, indeed, correctly and swiftly interpret the law.

    This immersion, though, was never organic – it did not come from a place of wanting fairness for everyone. If it did, I would support it.

    The truth is that it has been imposed from on high as a response to intense lobbying and acquiescence to activist demands.

    One can see this particularly in the case of the BBC, whose top brass started taking meetings with Stonewall activists in 2012. Everyone was sold on the idea of trans rights being the new civil rights and a symbol of being cutting edge.

    This is how the full-scale abandonment of both women’s rights and any notion of safeguarding has been enacted by supposedly progressive institutions – in the name of some non-specific idea of modernity. It has been appalling.

    And where do we end up? With public money being spent to fight a working-class nurse who doesn’t want to get undressed in front of a man? How is this right?

    The emperor is naked. We have long known that. Let him parade his nakedness in his own special cubicle. Get out of ours!

    And stay out!

  • Guest post: Shop from home

    Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Two gowns on his shoulder.

    I’m guessing that Zara also fails to provide changing rooms based on astrological sign, or the colour of one’s aura.

    A non-binary shopper said they felt ‘dehumanised’ and accused a fashion brand of being ‘transphobic’ after they were refused entry to a women’s changing room.

    No, there’s no such thing as a “non-binary shopper.” Someone might claim to be “non-binary”, but that declaration does not change their sex, or remove it altogether. They might, at most, be “gender nonconforming”. But, being a beardy bloke, he should not be trying to access women’s changing rooms.

    A clothing store specializing in women’s clothing can’t be expected to offer facilities for male crossdressers, or male crossdressers claiming to be “non-binary.” If he wants to, he can shop online, buy whatever he wants, using whatever name he wants, and nobody would be any the wiser. But that’s no solution, that’s part of the problem; he needs to be noticed. He’s special, and must be pampered, catered to, and validated. If he’s not sufficiently satisfied, he gets to pout in front of an audience. Not only that, he gets to bully and shame real, live people. Shopping online robs him of all of these pleasures; in cyberspace, no one can hear you whine.

    As far as “dehumanized”? No. I’d say it’s more likely the other way around. Just as “bringing your whole self” to work doesn’t really help job performance or workplace morale if your fellow employees have to alternately genuflect and walk on eggshells because you’re so much more fucking awesome than they are, because of your invisible gender feels.

    “Bringing your whole self” shopping doesn’t enhance the retail experience for those forced to deal with your fucking awesome invisible gender feels. For you, they’re a captive audience, doing their best to please customers in order to make a living. Making unreasonable demands of store staff, who are obligated by their positions to try to make you happy, is abusive. Your money gives you power over them. Your actions might cause problems for the company they’re working for (like bad publicity, when you go running in tears to the press with your non-story, on a slow news day). In fact, you’re counting on exactly that implicit threat in order to get your way. Depending on the employer, the clerk you’re pressuring might be sacked if the boss decides “The customer is always right,” even though sometimes, the customer is just an asshole.

    Staff refusing to let you access women’s spaces which you are not entitled to enter, for the safety and dignity of their female clientele (let’s not forget them, shall we), does nothing to damage your “humanity”. It might make you confront the boundaries of your delusion, and the limits of your ability to force others to accommodate, and participate in it, but that’s on you, not them. Seeing your comfort as more important than women’s safety doesn’t make you the good guy, let alone a “victim.” Your interest in women’s change rooms makes you a suspicious man. A similar insistence on accessing a children’s area in which to change would also, correctly, raise a safeguarding flag. Claiming an NB “gender identity” does not change that. You are no less a man, and therefore, under prudent, and necessary, safeguarding rules, no less a threat than any other random man.

    Tying your “humanity” to others’s compliance with your selfish, unreasonable demands is not a sign of good psychological health. Ditto investing so much (anything?) in a nonsensical “gender identity,” in order to be special or different for just existing. Everyone exists. You’re not that special. Get over it, or get help. Shop from home; leave the clerks (and the female customers) alone.

  • Two gowns on his shoulder

    Oh goody, an opportunity to hassle the workers at a clothing store. Always fun.

    A non-binary shopper said they felt ‘dehumanised’ and accused a fashion brand of being ‘transphobic’ after they were refused entry to a women’s changing room.

    That’s just silly. Humans are the only ones who pretend to be the opposite sex and make a big fuss on social meeja if no one believes them.

    Giorgio Firico, 21, tried to go to the ladies changing room at Zara in Oxford when the female assistant told them it was against the rules and refused to give them a number for the clothing.

    Giorgio, who studies in the US and is in Oxford visiting a friend, said: “I was wearing men’s clothing but I had two gowns on my shoulder, it was obvious what I wanted to try on.”

    It was obvious he wanted to be a pest. That so often is obvious.

    Zara has been contacted for response, but had not responded by the time we went to press.

    Yeah and it never will. Your attempt to be interesting has fallen flat.

  • Trans pregnant

    But…but…but…

    Good Law Project aka Jolyon Maugham exclaims Trans people must be allowed to have children.

    But sir, trans people have had their child-making bits removed or rendered nugatory.

    The Gender Recognition Panel is refusing to legally recognise trans people’s affirmed gender if they’re trying to conceive children. But that breaches their human rights.

    Does it? How? Is legal recognition of “affirmed” aka fake “gender” a human right? It seems a good deal too niche to be a right. It may be a right according to the Jolyons of the world, but that’s not really definitive.

    Good Law Project has appeared at the High Court to support a man who has been denied his gender recognition certificate. The Gender Recognition Panel rejected his application, saying that because he was trying to conceive, he had not been living as a man.

    See, that just underlines what a consignment of geriatric shoe manufacturers all this is. What tf does “living as a man” even mean? Is it like children living as someone off the tv by thinking it inside their heads? Bullshit in, bullshit out, so a bullshit “gender certificate” is going to remain bullshit whether the man is trying to conceive or trying to count the hairs on his chest.

  • But no burial records

    The full horrors of Tuam are about to be dug up.

    The full excavation of a mass grave of babies and young children at Tuam in County Galway is under way. The exhumations will be carried out at the site of an institution for unmarried mothers, which operated between 1925 and 1961.

    The story came to international attention 11 years ago, after amateur historian Catherine Corless discovered there were death certificates for 796 babies and children who were in the institution, but no burial records. In 2017, investigators found what they described as “significant quantities of human remains” at the site.

    What the BBC carefully does not spell out is that 706 dead babies and children is a massive number and indicates neglect at best and horrors at worst. The Irish Catholic church is under the microscope again and it’s not going to be pretty.

    The bodies were in underground chambers in a disused sewage system.

    Because the Irish Catholic Church saw them as so much garbage. But hey, don’t you dare have an abortion. You have to gestate that fetus to term and then push it out so that we can starve and torture it to death.

    The institution, which was known as St Mary’s mother-and-baby home, was run by Catholic religious order the Bon Secours Sisters and owned by Galway County Council.

    Yeah really very wonderful bon secours there. Top notch. Almost as good as handing the babies over to a pack of wolves.

    Scientists say the remains are largely “commingled” – in other words, the bones are mixed up.

    Because the babies were thrown into the sewer system like so much garbage.

  • It’s International Make Shit Up Day

    Where are the grownups???