Well you can’t do both. Pick one, or pick the other; you can’t pick both, just as you can’t be both here and gone, both alive and dead, both a rabbit and a snake.

It’s trans inclusion or women only. Not both.

(But what about women who claim to be men? If they claim to be men then they don’t belong in a women’s college. Quislings.)

Cambridge University’s oldest women-only college is allowing trans women to enrol.

Newnham College opened in 1871 and first allowed trans women students to join in 2017. In the wake of the Supreme Court ruling, it has decided to continue with its pre-existing policy.

…

Campaigners have pledged to report the college to the Charity Commission over a possible breach of the law for this decision.

Postgraduate student Maeve Halligan, who co-founded a single-sex feminist group, the Society of Women, at the university, told the Mail on Sunday that the decision proved the college is no longer “an all-female college”.

A letter to students from principal Alison Rose reportedly claims the trans policy of the college is “cleared by the college’s lawyers”.

“We are a women-only college, under the provisions of Schedule 12 of the Equality Act 2010 and our Charter and Statutes,” the college writes in its gender policy on students, published last month. “We are open to all female applicants.”

Men are not female.

It’s simple: the more items you pile on the less meaning there is. Adding more doesn’t make a claim more true, it makes it less so.

A row has broken out after a council rejected a motion to support the county’s LGBTQIA+ community.

Wiltshire Council’s councillor Helen Belcher, who transitioned several years ago, said rejecting the motion that would have ensured LGBTQIA+ people felt represented was “disgraceful”.

But there are no LGBTQIA+ people. Obviously. People can’t be both lesbian and gay male. What is Q supposed to mean? I is a medical condition, not a sexual orientation. A is just nothing – we don’t talk about disliking books or Portugal or horses as an idenniny so why pretend not liking sex is an idenniny? The LGBTQIA+ label cancels itself out by being so overloaded.

The original motion, which was presented before a full council meeting at County Hall in Trowbridge on Tuesday, stated: “[It] has been introduced to clearly affirm that, under the new administration, Wiltshire Council remains fully supportive of our LGBTQIA+ community and the diverse nature of our population.”

Well which is it? Diversity or communniny? You do realize they pull in opposite directions, right? Don’t you?

The Beeb unwisely includes a photo of Belcher, which failed to persuade me that he’s a woman.

Councillor Belcher said changing the proposals to a “bland, everyone matters” motion was “disgraceful”. “One of the speeches started talking about how we’re all the same, nobody’s different, we’re all human beings and my response to that was ‘I don’t get attacked because I’m a human being, I get attacked because I’m trans because some people don’t think trans people like me should exist’.”

More sloppy (and pathetically effective) catastrophizing. It’s not that people think Belcher shouldn’t exist, it’s that they know he’s not a woman. Those are two quite different things.

Naomi Cunningham at Legal Feminist on the ministerial foot-dragging:

Regulatory impact assessments are normally carried out in order to assess the effects of a proposed change in the law. The government should not need to be told that an EHRC Code of Practice does not change the law. Neither should it need to be told that a Supreme Court judgment on the meaning of a 15-year-old act of parliament does not change the law. In For Women Scotland v Scottish Ministers, the Supreme Court has authoritatively interpreted the Equality Act 2010; that means it has told us what the Act meant ever since 2010.

…

A code of practice that is demonstrably erroneous (as the EHRC’s 2011 Code, which the current draft is intended to replace) is worse than useless: it’s still admissible in legal proceedings, and courts and tribunals have a duty to take it into account so far as relevant, but they are bound by the Supreme Court judgment. So the defunct Code of Practice will continue to rattle around confusing people — or in some cases providing them with the excuse they want to continue to act in defiance of the law. But every time a claim actually comes to court, the judge will still have to follow the law as set out by the Supreme Court. 

…

The proposed regulatory impact assessment looks remarkably like an act of simple cowardice. The government knows that a code of practice doesn’t make or change the law, but only explains it. It knows that this is not what regulatory impact assessment is for. It knows that many employers and institutions are currently delaying complying with the law until the new code is issued. It knows that many thousands of individuals are suffering ongoing legal wrongs because of the ongoing delay. It knows that a proportion of those will continue to bring claims, and the courts and tribunals will clog up with cases, and public authorities and private employers will continue to pour legal fees into defending them. 

But it also knows that the new code of practice will be unpopular with many of its supporters. It is seizing on the idea of a regulatory impact assessment to delay the inevitable; and to redirect the fury of its activists to the courts and tribunals, and to the brave individuals who will have to go to court at great personal cost, often one by one, sometimes in groups like the Darlington nurses, to enforce their rights. It’s a craven exercise in blame-shifting. 

It’s a toddler ploy. Toddlers can come up with endless reasons they can’t put their shoes on or get out of that mud puddle or stop teasing the dog. Magic gender is a toddler ideology.

Wonkypolicywonk points out that it’s fatuous to do an Impact Statement on…obeying the law.

Women & Equalities Minister Bridget Phillipson is in town, and – having already lost the Labour Party deputy leadership election – she’s now lost her moral compass.

Yep, rather than lay before Parliament the revised Code of Practice that the Equality & Human Rights Commission (EHRC) delivered to her two months ago, Bridget the Moral Midget, the Queen of the Transgender Blues, has instead demanded that the EHRC produce a Regulatory Impact Assessment – an analytical tool used by government departments to quantify the costs and benefits of proposed new legislation – on the revised Code.

…

But even it only took one month, one week or even just one day, it would still be an utter waste of time and effort. Because what would be the point of the EHRC’s hard-pressed staff calculating the Net Present Social Value and Business Net Present Value of businesses and organisations ‘following the law’, when the only other policy option is for businesses and organisations to ‘ignore the law’, and ‘ignoring the law’ is not actually an option that is open to businesses and organisations?

The point would be virtue signaling. The point would be telling onlookers that Women & Equalities Minister Bridget Phillipson is not one of those horrible people who think women have rights.

Daniel Sanderson at the Times has background on Tom Harlow.

When Tom Harlow launched the Cabaret Against the Hate Speech at the start of 2023, it was badged as a symbol of “queer joy”, which aimed to inject a bit of fun into politics and even tempt opponents to “dance along”.

Two and a half years on, however, the Glasgow-based drag queen has rapidly become one of the most polarising combatants in the crowded field of Scotland’s culture wars.

Except of course that one whole side of that particular “culture war” is not a combatant at all. It’s not rival gangs squaring off, it’s one gang trying to demolish the rights of half of all human beings. We – women – didn’t start any war. We just abandoned our role as the sex that doesn’t matter, the sex that is weak and clueless, the sex that can be raped and mocked and choked.

Harlow, whose real name is Thomas Michael Moncrieff Carlin, has carved out a niche counter-protesting events, often organised by gender-critical women, by blasting loud music at them from a huge, portable sound system.

Yeeeaahhh that’s not counter protesting. That’s preventing. That’s silencing. That’s drowning out. It’s hostile and rude and aggressive. It’s not cute.

Until September he was only really known to those embedded in the Scottish arts scene or LGBT activism.

That changed in early September when he attended a protest organised by For Women Scotland at Holyrood. What appeared to be a minor altercation with Susan Smith, one of the group’s directors, has mushroomed into a political row.

On that day outside the Scottish parliament Smith approached Harlow urging him to turn the music down. Harlow allegedly shoved a rainbow umbrella towards her face. When she grabbed it, Harlow attempted to yank it away. Getting nowhere, Smith simply walked off.

He then filed a complaint with Police Scotland, alleging he had been “harassed and intimidated” by Smith, a 54-year-old former financial worker.

But of course he’s the one who was doing the harassing. He disrupted a protest by women, he was asked to stop by a woman, he shoved an umbrella in the woman’s face. He is the instigator; he is not a victim.

Campaigners argued that the far more serious issue was the police’s alleged failure to protect their right to free speech by allowing one man to disrupt the event. Despite these concerns and initial low expectations for the case to proceed, police have now apparently sided with Harlow, issuing an ultimatum to Smith: accept a formal warning or potentially face being prosecuted for vandalism.

Women have a protest, man makes noise to drown them out, police side with man and threaten woman.

It might as well be 1957.

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on With the gender-critical crowd.

The problem is, they are getting crazier and more extreme.

You’d think that an adherent of a delusional, reality-denying belief system that relies on bullying and intimidation would be more circumspect about tossing out charges of insanity and militancy, but whatever. DARVO’s gonna DARV. Maybe he can’t help it. His “crazy and extreme” meter likely broke in the same event that had it indicating “misgendering” as “actual violence, ” so its measurements can’t be relied upon. Still, the self-blindness is hard to swallow. As if men demanding (and being given!) access to women’s spaces was not crazy and extreme. Kafka would have packed up and gone home if he’d lived to see this unbelievable level of absurdity play out in real life. What would he have had left to write about?

If you admit “trans women don’t belong in women’s sports” they agree, but call you a man the whole time.

And? You are a man. Next?

If you admit, “I understand I am a biological man, but this is how I want to live my life and talking about me like this is degrading”….

No, you clearly don’t understand or accept this, otherwise you’d have no problem with women accurately sexing you. What’s more, their right to call you a man (because “biological male”) is not contingent upon your understanding and acceptance of anything. They get to ignore your supposed “gender identity” and point out the material reality of your sex, particularly because you mistakenly and maliciously believe the former takes precedence over the latter, and are eager to punish them for not acceding to your demand that they submit to it.

If you admit that hurtful language is part of free speech but you don’t have to associate with people that degrade you, they act like the victim and call you a man and then say you should be thrown in an insane asylum.

Never mind the rape and death threats that your side has made against them. Women, in being forced to accept men into their spaces, were not allowed to dissociate from people like you who degraded them. That is the whole point of gender ideology, to force women to accept the presence of men without complaint. Part of the complaint against Nurse Peggie was that she left every time Dr. Upton came into the women’s changing room. Attempts to remove herself from a situation which she felt unsafe was part of the supposed crime she was being charged with. She was supposed to stay, to her own discomfort and detriment, in order to “affirm” Upton’s notional “womanhood.” Peggie (and all the other women and girls forced to accept male intrusion into female only spaces) weren’t “playing the victim”, they were victims. Their resistance was criminalized, and they were persecuted and prosecuted by the state for not bowing to the misogynistic, insane demand to accept TiMs as “other women.”

It’s like this on everything. They are incapable of looking for a middle ground on bathrooms. They want maximalist policies on everything.

If expecting women to accept the intrusion of any and all men into their spaces, at any place and time of the man’s choosing, solely on the man’s claimed “gender identity” isn’t a “maximalist policy”, I don’t know what is. Women have no need to accept any “middle ground” on this whatsoever, as there is no middle ground. It’s no different from expecting women athletes to put up with just a little bit of cheating or injury at the hands of male athletes. But I guess it’s only natural for an arsonist to complain if his victim refuses to let him burn down at least half of their home. If these guys were at all consistent, they would, like Trump, be backing Putin’s demand to retain Ukrainian territory that it has taken by force.

I want a middle ground on so many of these polices. BUT THE FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEM IS THEY DO NOT. They enjoy degrading us, it’s fun for them.

He stands in front of the funhouse mirror, gurning and capering, but refuses to admit that the reflection he sees is his.

Trump says it’s probably illegal to mock him.

No dude. You’re thinking of lèse-majesté. We don’t have that. It wouldn’t work for you even if we did have it, because you’re not majesté. We don’t have majesté here – did you not know that? We firmly explicitly rejected it centuries ago. Has no one told you? Have you never read a word about US history? Do you know what day it is? But even if we did have it, it still wouldn’t apply to you, because you’re not. You’re not majesté-having. You’re the opposite. You’re vulgar, you’re coarse, you’re clumsy, you’re slow, you’re thick, you’re crude. Even foul Andrew has more of it than you do.

I get to say that. We all get to say that.

Donald J. Trump

@realDonaldTrump

Seth Meyers of NBC may be the least talented person to “perform” live in the history of television. In fact, he may be the WORST to perform, live or otherwise. I watched his show the other night for the first time in years. In it he talked endlessly about electric catapults on aircraft carriers which I complain about as not being as good as much less expensive steam catapults. On and on he went, a truly deranged lunatic. Why does NBC waste its time and money on a guy like this??? – NO TALENT, NO RATINGS, 100% ANTI TRUMP, WHICH IS PROBABLY ILLEGAL!!!

Meanwhile in a neglected part of the world

More than 65,000 people have fled el-Fasher in Darfur after it was captured by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) on October 26, according to the United Nations, but many others remain at risk inside the city.

“Sudan is absolutely an apocalyptic situation,” German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul said at the Manama Dialogue in Bahrain on Saturday.

…

In Bahrain, British Foreign Minister Yvette Cooper said: “No amount of aid can resolve a crisis of this magnitude until the guns fall silent.”

“Mass executions, starvation and the devastating use of rape as a weapon of war, with women and children bearing the brunt of the largest humanitarian crisis in the 21st century,” Cooper added. “For too long, this terrible conflict has been neglected, while suffering has simply increased.”

Euan McColm in The Scotsman on the top boss Scotsman:

When it emerged last week that a leading feminist campaigner faced vandalism charges after touching an umbrella belonging to an angry trans activist during a protest outside the Scottish Parliament, the backlash from opposition politicians was swift and justified.

Here was as clear an example as we’ve seen of the way in which gender ideologues abuse the system, making spurious police complaints against those who must be punished for believing biological sex is real and immutable.

But, asked during First Minister’s Questions on Thursday about this intolerable abuse of power by Police Scotland, John Swinney refused to speak out. It would not, he told MSPs, be appropriate for him to comment on a live police matter.

So the police must be free to persecute women for defending our rights. Seems fair.

The treatment of Susan Smith is deeply disturbing but, I’m afraid, feels absolutely inevitable.

As one of the founders – alongside Trina Budge and Marion Calder – of the organisation For Women Scotland, Smith brought the case that saw the Supreme Court rule in April that, when it comes to the law, sex is a matter of biology rather than feelings.

Recent history tells us that trans activists insist such insolent women who loudly and clearly reject the fantasy that “transwomen are women” are to pay a price. The opportunity to exact it came during a protest outside the Scottish Parliament in September when Smith and several hundred others gathered to demand the Government implement the law on single-sex spaces.

A solo counter-protest was held by trans activist, Tom Harlow, who turned up with a portable PA system and proceeded to play music loudly, drowning out the feminist speakers.

So “counter-protest” doesn’t really name what he did. Drowning out the women=silencing the women. He wins and they lose.

Harlow, a drag queen who performs under the somewhat clunky name “Cabaret Against The Hate Speech” (that definite article is almost as unforgivable as his behaviour), was surrounded by a protective ring of cops while he put those women in their place. When Smith dared approach him, he thrust his umbrella towards her.

And she fended it off. Burn the witch!

[W]hile there’s no doubt over what happened, it is not (yet) illegal in Scotland for a person to touch an umbrella that’s been thrust towards them by a misogynist.

It’s perfectly clear from photos and video that Harlow’s umbrella was damaged before Smith got anywhere near him but, despite this incontrovertible evidence that no crime took place, he made a complaint to police.

Rather than laughing him out of the station – or lifting him for wasting their time – officers took Harlow’s report seriously and subsequently wrote to Smith instructing her to attend an Edinburgh police station where she would be warned about her behaviour. Failure to turn up, she was told, would leave her facing a charge of vandalism.

Have officers written to Tom Harlow instructing him to drop in for a lecture on his behavior? It seems not. It’s fine for him to make noise to silence women and shove an umbrella in the face of a woman who objects, but it’s very naughty of a woman to push his umbrella out of her face so she has to go the station to be scolded by the cops.

It’s as if they’re determined to show off what women-hating bully-loving shits they are.

How ridiculous it is that the touching of an umbrella should have led to any kind of police involvement. But how troubling that, even now, as evidence of the damaged caused by trans ideology mounts, Police Scotland is willing to act on the instructions of activists whose refusal to accept biological reality puts them at odds not only with the majority but with the law.

There was nothing whatsoever to prevent the First Minister from telling MSPs on Thursday that what is currently happening to Susan Smith is wrong. Nor is there anything to prevent him demanding Chief Constable Jo Farrell explain what the hell she thinks she’s playing at.

But hating women is the trend in Scottish officialdom.

Aw look, we get to see Euan pretending to be a Real Live Genuine Journalist with a little tiny stub of pencil and a little tiny notebook so that he can scribble away and thus convince all observers that he is really truly reporting on the scene.

You’ve got to hand it to Willoughby, he does have great self-awareness.

We remind him of blokes who dress up!

Best laugh I’ve had all day.

Cops v feminists chapter 9 billion:

[Susan] Smith, from feminist group For Women Scotland, took the Scottish Government to the Supreme Court to prove that the legal definition of ‘woman’ is biological female. You might have heard about it.

Now Police Scotland has accused her of vandalising a rainbow-coloured umbrella. They say she can either take a recorded warning or be charged with damaging the multi-hued raindrop repeller at a rally in Edinburgh last month.

The force has confirmed it is investigating a ‘complaint of an umbrella being damaged’ but has not taken a ‘final decision’ on how to proceed…

Smith was protesting outside the gender Death Star (legal name: ‘the Scottish Parliament’) on September 4 when a counter-protestor with the now infamous brolly set up a sound system and began playing loud music, presumably to drown out all those quarrelsome women.

No “presumably” about it. Of course that’s what he did it for – and it’s not the first time.

Smith and her comrades have had to endure years of derision from the Scottish establishment, all because they know a man who calls himself a woman is still a man. 

These are perfectly normal middle-class women with impressive CVs, well-established expertise, and diverse viewpoints, and yet they’ve been treated like the Waitrose wing of ISIS.

…

The impression of a police force steeped in gender ideology going after a feminist dissident on what appear to be trumped up charges could do untold damage to public confidence in policing.

Plus it’s not an impression, it’s just the reality.

Brian Wu is doing his shtick.

Trans sisters. I’m pretty sure I was wrong. I am sorry.

I genuinely thought that as a trans woman, if ceded some points with the gender critical crowd we could have a healthier conversation and arrive at better public policy.

The problem is, they are getting crazier and more extreme.

If you admit “trans women don’t belong in women’s sports” they agree, but call you a man the whole time.

If you admit, “I understand I am a biological man, but this is how I want to live my life and talking about me like this is degrading” they scream about free speech.

Well that didn’t take long. Four sentences in and he says our rejecting his narcissistic demands is “screaming.” The contempt for women is never buried very far down.

If you admit that hurtful language is part of free speech but you don’t have to associate with people that degrade you, they act like the victim and call you a man and then say you should be thrown in an insane asylum.

What does “act like the victim” mean? What does he think he’s acting like? We call him a man because he is a man and women need to know which people are men.

It’s like this on everything. They are incapable of looking for a middle ground on bathrooms. They want maximalist policies on everything.

Ah yes, a middle ground on having men in our toilets – what would that be? Letting one in but telling a second he’ll have to wait until man #1 leaves?

There is no middle ground. A rapist doesn’t get to demand a middle ground on rape. He doesn’t get to force women to submit if he promises to be gentle.

They’d throw a fully transitioned, fully passing trans woman in male prison genpop and laugh as she got aids from being raped.

There it is again, his hatred of our refusal to be silent. We scream, we laugh – how DARE we?

I want a middle ground on so many of these polices. BUT THE FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEM IS THEY DO NOT. They enjoy degrading us, it’s fun for them.

There is no middle ground on men taking what belongs to women. Making completely deranged unreasonable demands and then blaming us for not wanting to give up a mere half of our rights is not a killer argument.

Just when you think Jolyon Maugham can’t get any lower (not least because Earth is in the way) he does…

Bash Back bashes again.

Radical trans-led direct action group Bash Back targeted the headquarters of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) in London this morning, amid growing tensions over the Commission’s controversial interim guidance on single-sex spaces.

The group, which gained notoriety earlier this month for vandalising the Brighton Centre ahead of the FiLiA feminist conference, posted a statement on social media platform BlueSky before posting videos and photographs from this morning. The statement read: “The EHRC is a hate group. This month, the Good Law Project forced the EHRC to dump their transphobic ‘interim guidance’.

“Last week, six human rights groups demanded the EHRC have their A-status revoked due to an ‘obsessive campaign to strip trans people of our rights’.

Of course there is no such campaign. Nobody wants to strip trans people of their rights. The problem is that many “activists” demand new and peculiar “rights” that are not rights at all. There is no broad sweeping right to be endorsed or validated as something you’re not. There’s no right to force other people to play along with anyone’s fantasies or games of let’s pretend. Ironically, trying to force people to endorse lies about the ontology of trans people is a violation of rights. No we don’t have to lie for you and no we’re not going to. If it were 1943 and you were the French Resistance we would, but it’s not and you’re not, so we don’t and we’re not.

The Bash Back protest comes in response to guidance issued by the EHRC earlier this year, which advised that trans individuals could be excluded from single-sex spaces such as toilets and changing rooms based on their biological sex.

Men want to be allowed to invade women’s toilets and changing rooms, so they smash up the front of a building. We are all duly impressed.

Oh but it’s all so complicated, we don’t know how to deal with it.

Rules that would ban transgender people from using facilities that do not match their biological sex could be delayed for more than a year, it has emerged, as ministers were accused of “undermining the law” by demanding extra checks.

Bridget Phillipson, the women and equalities minister, received statutory guidance from the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) eight weeks ago, setting out how gyms, clubs and hospitals must judge single-sex spaces based on biology.

The document has not yet been laid in parliament and many organisations, including some NHS trusts and the civil service, said they were waiting for the guidance before implementing changes after the Supreme Court ruling in April that the use of “woman” and “man” in the Equality Act refer to sex at birth.

They’re just helpless before this puzzle. What does “woman” mean? What is “sex”? What means “at birth”?

Now they face further months of uncertainty after the government insisted on a regulatory impact assessment into the burden the guidance would place on businesses.

Claire Coutinho, the shadow women and equalities minister, told The Times: “Any delay in approving this code puts the safety and dignity of women and girls at risk. The Supreme Court ruling was clear and every organisation has a duty to comply with the law.

“Doing so is not a regulatory burden that needs assessment by government bureaucrats. Bridget Phillipson must get a grip and stop hiding behind process to avoid upsetting her backbenchers.”

Oh come on. You’re saying she should pay more attention to the safety and dignity of women and girls than to her own standing with the trans communinny?

Dozens of Labour MPs last week wrote to Peter Kyle, the business secretary, to warn that the regulations would be a “minefield” of competing rights and there would be large costs to implementing them.

They’re not competing rights though. Men don’t have rights to force themselves on women. That is not a right.

The mills of the gods grind slowly, but they grind exceeding fine.

A friend sent this for our viewing pleasure:

More dawdling and stalling and delaying because hey it’s only women so we really can’t be bothered.

Rules that would ban transgender people from using facilities that do not match their biological sex could be delayed for more than a year, it has emerged, as ministers were accused of “undermining the law” by demanding extra checks.

Bridget Phillipson, the women and equalities minister, received statutory guidance from the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) eight weeks ago, setting out how gyms, clubs and hospitals must judge single-sex spaces based on biology.

The document has not yet been laid in parliament and many organisations, including some NHS trusts and the civil service, said they were waiting for the guidance before implementing changes after the Supreme Court ruling in April that the use of “woman” and “man” in the Equality Act refer to sex at birth.

Oh but it’s so complicated. How do we even know what any of that means? We need guidance. Lots and lots and lots of guidance. We simply can’t figure out what is expected of us.

Claire Coutinho, the shadow women and equalities minister, told The Times: “Any delay in approving this code puts the safety and dignity of women and girls at risk. The Supreme Court ruling was clear and every organisation has a duty to comply with the law.

“Doing so is not a regulatory burden that needs assessment by government bureaucrats. Bridget Phillipson must get a grip and stop hiding behind process to avoid upsetting her backbenchers.”

She’s not hiding, she’s resting.

Dozens of Labour MPs last week wrote to Peter Kyle, the business secretary, to warn that the regulations would be a “minefield” of competing rights and there would be large costs to implementing them.

Only if you think that men have a “right” to force themselves on women in all places and circumstances provided they idennify as trans laydeez.

Maya Forstater, chief executive of the charity Sex Matters, said: “Regulatory impact assessments are undertaken where there is a choice of options. It is a complete red herring for the government to suggest that there is any choice about complying with the Equality Act 2010 right now.”

Wellll they’re choosing to defy the act.

I welcomed The Cambridge University Society of Women to the fray a few days ago. Today the student paper Varsity explains how naughty those women are.

Students launch women’s society excluding trans women

Students launch women’s society excluding men. You don’t say! Mind you, feminists have been launching women’s societies and parties and so on for more than half a century, but let’s all disapprove of these women anyway. How very dare they.

Students have launched the first women’s society at the University of Cambridge to be restricted to those defined as “female at birth,” a move that has been criticised by other groups as “an assault on the trans community”.

Which is stupid. It’s not an assault on anyone to have groups for specific sets of people. The only reason this is the first women’s society at the University of Cambridge to be restricted to those defined as “female at birth” is because until the other day everyone knew that was what “women” meant. It wasn’t necessary to spell it out further, because women meant women.

The move immediately provoked backlash from across the University. The Cambridge University Labour Club (CULC) called it “the latest assault on the trans community at Cambridge,” accusing the society of promoting “transphobic rhetoric under the guise of ‘free speech’,” while several societies issued a joint statement in support of the trans community.

Blah blah blah. This club and that society and the other group of women-haters said this that and the other about these naughty wicked defiant witchy women. Blah blah.

There’s a great deal more of the same kind of thing. Read it at your peril.