Athena Forum responds:

On 3 October 2025, Michael O’Flaherty, Commissioner for Human Rights at the Council of Europe, addressed a letter to the UK Parliament expressing concern over the Supreme Court’s recent ruling and what he described as the “current climate for trans people in the UK.”

As one of the main drafters of the Yogyakarta Principles, a non-legal activist document that seeks to erase sex as a category in law and policy, O’Flaherty has long blurred the boundaries between human rights and ideological advocacy. His intervention now appears less as a defence of rights than as political pressure on independent courts and legislators. The UK Supreme Court ruling reaffirms basic legal clarity and women’s sex-based rights. Attempts to undermine such rulings through moral panic and behind-the-scenes lobbying mark a worrying misuse of institutional power.

All the more so when it’s a man blithely nuking women’s rights.

We remind the Commissioner that the “current climate” in the UK includes the recent attack on Europe’s largest women’s rights conference, FiLiA, which was vandalised by trans activists, requiring police protection for female attendees. The incident was the latest in a long series of attacks, threats and intimidation targeting women’s rights advocates across Europe.

The Council of Europe must uphold genuine human rights principles – equality before the law, the protection of women and girls, the safeguarding of democratic institutions from ideological capture – and its Commissioner must stay within his mandate.

Women have rights too, bro.

Here we go again.

Trans people at risk of exclusion from many UK public spaces, rights expert says

Transgender people risk being excluded from many public spaces as a result of the recent UK supreme court judgment and must be protected from discrimination, a human rights expert has said.

Michael O’Flaherty, the Council of Europe commissioner for human rights, said he had concerns about the climate for transgender people in the UK after April’s supreme court ruling that the legal definition of a woman in the Equality Act 2010 refers to biological sex.

Did he now. I wonder if he has any concerns about the climate for women.

Interim advice issued after the judgment by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) in effect banned transgender people from using facilities according to their lived gender and allowed services to request birth certificates to ensure single-sex services were protected.

Blah blah. People are not automatically allowed to do X according to their lived Y if Y is a fantasy that contradicts reality. That has never been a “right” except in theocracies. I could have a fantasy that I’m Keir Starmer, but I still wouldn’t be allowed to kick cis-Starmer out of 10 Downing Street.

In a letter to the respective chairs of the UK parliament’s joint committee on human rights and the women and equalities committee, O’Flaherty said there was a tendency in the UK to see the human rights of different groups as a “zero-sum game”.

He added: “This has contributed to narratives which build on prejudice against trans people and portray upholding their human rights as a de facto threat to the rights of others.”

Oh fuck off. It’s not a matter of “narratives”; it’s a matter of women’s rights. It’s trans ideology that relies on “narratives”; women are not a story but a fact, however stale and tiresome.

“Such a zero-sum approach risks certain inferences being drawn from the UK supreme court judgment that could lead to widespread exclusion of trans people from many public spaces.”

He means toilets. Men will be widely excluded from women’s toilets, but that does not exclude them from public spaces, because they can just use the men’s toilets, being as how they are men.

I’m so fed up with this tremulous lachrymose concern for men who playact being women at the expense of actual women. What about us, god damn it? Why is his fantasy about himself more important than our safety?

O’Flaherty said his letter “in no way detracts from the need to continue improving measures to prevent violence against women and girls, as well as the protection and promotion of women’s rights and gender equality more generally.”

Oh yes it does. That’s exactly what it does.

That’s not accurate.

It’s not “just like anyone else.” There are differences. Differences matter. And they don’t want to be accepted for who they are, they want to be accepted for who they are not. That’s the whole point. That’s what “trans” means. They’re men who want to be accepted aka validated aka confirmed as women. Men are not women.

What Owen Jones means is that they want to be accepted for who they fantasize they are. Children enjoy that. Children enjoy pretending to be various kinds of people. The enjoyment fades over time though, because pretending starts to seem silly.

Except when it doesn’t, I suppose. There are all these people – old enough to drive and vote and drink vodka – who go to comic book conventions and similar. I wonder if that’s part of the trans craze picture. I wonder if too much willing suspension of disbelief has enabled belief that people can change sex with the power of thought. Maybe Owen knows.

But either way, “just living their lives” is not a “just” when it includes men taking prizes and jobs and places in sports that were supposed to be for women. In that case they’re not “just living their lives,” they’re living a woman’s life, which prevents her from doing so.

Tipping point crossed.

The planet is grappling with a “new reality” as it reaches the first in a series of catastrophic and potentially irreversible climate tipping points: the widespread death of coral reefs, according to a landmark report produced by 160 scientists across the world.

As humans burn fossil fuels and ratchet up temperatures, it’s already driving more severe heat waves, floods, droughts, and wildfires. But there are even bigger impacts on the horizon. Climate change may also be pushing Earth’s crucial systems — from the Amazon rainforest to polar ice sheets — so far out of balance they collapse, sending catastrophic ripples across the planet.

…

Since 2023, the world’s reefs have been enduring the worst mass bleaching event on record as oceans reach record high temperatures, with more than 80% affected. What was an underwater riot of color and life is being replaced with a bleached, seaweed-dominated landscape.

“We have now pushed (coral reefs) beyond what they can cope with,” said Mike Barrett, chief scientific advisor at the World Wildlife Fund UK and co-author of the report. Unless global warming is reversed “extensive reefs as we know them will be lost,” the authors wrote.

And global warming is obviously not going to be reversed. We’re doing nothing to reverse it. Cars zoom, planes fly, cruise ships cruise.

Which human rights?

The treatment of transgender people in Britain could breach the European Convention on Human Rights, a watchdog has warned. Michael O’Flaherty, the Council of Europe’s commissioner for human rights, has written to senior MPs to raise his concerns about trans rights in the UK.

He urged the Government to avoid legal uncertainty for trans people in the wake of the Supreme Court‘s landmark ruling in April. Mr O’Flaherty also warned against breaching the human rights of trans people through ‘blanket practices or policies’ on single-sex spaces.

Well what are the rights of trans people? Do male trans people have a right to go into women’s spaces? Of course not, any more than they have a right to go into women’s kitchens and raid the fridge or into women’s beds and rape them. The “blanket” part is crucial. There are no exceptions for women’s right to have spaces where men can’t follow them. It’s not Michael O’Flaherty’s job to declare exceptions to that right.

In a letter to Lord Alton of Liverpool and Sarah Owen MP, the chairs of two parliamentary committees, he criticised a tendency to ‘see the human rights of different groups as a zero-sum game’.

‘This has contributed to narratives which build on prejudice against trans people and portray upholding their human rights as a de facto threat to the rights of others,’ he added.

Bollocks. Men are men. That’s not a “narrative” and it’s not a “prejudice.” Men are barred from some women’s spaces for good reasons; when it ain’t broke don’t fix it.

I forget; who was it who authorized Trump to kill people in boats near Venezuela? Could it have been nobody?

The US military conducted yet another strike on a boat alleged to be trafficking drugs off the coast of Venezuela, killing six people on board, President Donald Trump announced Tuesday.

Trump said that the vessel was “affiliated with a Designated Terrorist Organization” but did not name any organization or provide evidence to back up the assertion.

“Intelligence confirmed the vessel was trafficking narcotics, was associated with illicit narcoterrorist networks, and was transiting along a known DTO route,” Trump said on his Truth Social platform. “The strike was conducted in International Waters, and six male narcoterrorists aboard the vessel were killed in the strike. No U.S. Forces were harmed.”

This is at least the fifth time the US has announced such a strike; the Pentagon announced another one in early October.

Is it open season on people in international waters? Are we all allowed to “conduct a strike” on boats as long as they’re in open waters?

The administration has defended the strikes. In a letter to Congress, the Pentagon said Trump had determined that the US is in an “armed conflict” with the drug cartels his administration has designated as terrorist organizations, and that smugglers for the cartels are “unlawful combatants,” CNN has previously reported.

Yeeeah I think that’s some made-up law right there. Can other countries “strike” US vessels as long as they’re in open water?

Earlier this month, Republican Sen. Rand Paul announced that he was cosponsoring a War Powers resolution that would stop the president from being able to unilaterally conduct such strikes.

“Blowing up boats without due process could risk unintended escalation and trigger regime change efforts — an approach history has repeatedly shown to fail. That’s why I’m co-sponsoring a War Powers resolution to stop it. Congress must reassert its authority,” Paul said on X.

Paul also publicly criticized Vice President JD Vance last month after he celebrated one of the strikes. “What a despicable and thoughtless sentiment it is to glorify killing someone without a trial,” Paul said in response to the vice president.

Vance is a despicable guy.

The local airport says it’s not taking Noem’s crap.

The Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (SEA) won’t air a video of U.S Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem blaming Democrats for the ongoing government shutdown, a spokesperson confirmed. 

The video was made to play on monitors over TSA lines at airports nationwide. In the video obtained by CNN, Noem states: 

It is TSA’s top priority to make sure that you have the most pleasant and efficient airport experience as possible while we keep you safe. However, Democrats in Congress refuse to fund the federal government, and because of this, many of our operations are impacted, and most of our TSA employees are working without pay.

Bluh. No competent proofreaders there? “the most pleasant and efficient airport experience as possible”? “impacted” instead of “disrupted” or similar? What a hack.

The video will not be airing above TSA lines at SEA Airport. A Port of Seattle spokesperson shared a statement with KING 5: 

“The Port of Seattle will not play the video on its screens at SEA Airport, due to the political nature of the content. We continue to urge bipartisan efforts to end the government shutdown and are working to find ways to support federal employees working without pay at SEA during the shutdown.”

Other Pacific Northwest airports are also choosing to not run the video. A spokesperson for Spokane International Airport told KING 5’s sister station KREM 2 that it wasn’t able to accommodate the request to run the video due to the airport’s First Amendment policy, saying the video falls under prohibited advertising content on political issues. A spokesperson for the Boise Airport said the airport declined to play the video due to the airport’s policy prohibiting commentary about political issues.

Well done Pacific Northwest!

So this is going well.

More than 150 unvaccinated schoolchildren are being quarantined for 21 days in South Carolina after being exposed to measles, state officials said. Because the students who were exposed did not have immunisations, they were forced to miss school during the period of potential disease transmission.

South Carolina is the latest US state to experience a measles surge this year after outbreaks in New Mexico and Texas where hundreds were infected and three people died.

Great news, right? It was boring having immunization take measles out of the picture, doncha think? Life is better with a little excitement and risk. Provided it’s those other kids over there.

So far this year the US has confirmed 1,563 cases, the highest level nationwide in more than 30 years, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Thanks, Bob! You’re making us all proud!

The South Carolina Department of Public Health reported its eighth confirmed measles case in two weeks on Thursday, in Greenville County, in the northern part of the state.

“What this case tells us is that there is active, unrecognized community transmission of measles occurring in the Upstate, which makes it vital to ensure that the public have received their measles vaccinations,” a department release said.

The MMR vaccine is the most effective way to fight off measles, which can lead to pneumonia, brain swelling and death. The jabs are 97% effective and also immunise against mumps and rubella.

In addition to the outbreak in South Carolina, cases are on the rise in Utah and Arizona, where 55 and 63 cases have been reported, respectively.

Rock-solid Republican states all of them.

However the Beeb notes that there are even worse outbreaks in Canada, so it may not be all the fault of the Kennedy school of malpractice.

Further north, large numbers of measles have been reported across Canada, particularly in the provinces of Alberta and Ontario.

The country has logged 5024 cases, the government said, more than three times the number in the US, despite Canada’s far smaller population. The data has raised questions about why its spreading so quickly there and whether Canadian authorities are doing enough to contain it.

Be careful out there.

Grovel grovel grovel we’re sorry we ever thought of it, we’ll never do it again.

A Scottish pub has cancelled a Harry Potter-themed event after public backlash.

The Old Forge, on the Knoydart peninsula on the west coast, said in an announcement on social media that the Halloween party had been called off as the theme “has proven dividing, and some of our staff have received inappropriate grief as a result”.

Well I should think so indeed. The naughty woman who wrote the Harry Potter books doesn’t think men can be women. Have you ever heard of anything so evil?

In a statement on Mondaty, the Knoydart pub said: “The pub management team have decided to cancel this year’s Halloween dinner party. It was always meant to be just a fun night, but unfortunately using Harry Potter as a theme has proven dividing, and some of our staff have received inappropriate grief as a result.

So it’s not so much that the theme was dividing as it is that some people think it’s ok to abuse bar staff for having a popular fictional character as a theme for a Halloween dinner party.

Ministers must not delay single-sex guidance

A key part of Bridget Phillipson’s second cabinet role as women and equalities minister, one might have thought, would be trying to keep discrimination against women to a minimum. Luckily for her, that job was made a lot simpler after the helpful intervention of the UK Supreme Court this year. In April’s landmark ruling, the court clarified what even the most legally naïve onlooker might have been able to guess: namely, that when words such as “woman” and “man” occur in the UK Equality Act 2010 they refer to female and male people respectively, and have nothing to do with anyone’s self-ascribed gender identity.

Much the way anyone’s imaginary age – be it 12 or 18 or 35 – has nothing to do with eligibility to vote, drive, marry, join the military.

Yet, despite the explicitness of that ruling, senior Labour figures are refusing to catch on. [Bridget] Phillipson [equalities minister] is now sitting on revised statutory guidance, produced by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), as to how the clarified law should be implemented in gyms, clubs, hospitals and other public spaces.

Sitting on in the sense of not acting on.

Though the official explanation for the delay in presenting the new guidance to the Commons is said to be the care with which it is being examined, the likelier explanation is that gender politics is once again being weaponised within Labour circles.

How much care does it take to figure out that men are not women?

Such clumsy acts of self-compromise are a reminder of the damage gender ideology wreaked on the political left. Savvier politicians would have taken the Supreme Court’s ruling as a political gift: a cast-iron reason to never again feel squeamish about defending women’s rights.

Savvier politicians or politicians who give a shit about women. Why is that always such a neglected reason?

Paying political lip service to the notion that these rules are complicated or ambiguous is discreditable. Labour should banish such confusion to the unserious fringes of politics, for example to the Green party, which this month banned delegates advocating sex-realist policies from its conference.

Plant a tree, silence a woman. Good job, Greens.

Trump pretends to be buddies with coal miners and other working stiffs, but when it comes to enforcing regulations that protect workers…sorry, he has a pressing engagement on the nearest golf course.

When coal miners came to Washington in April, they posed behind President Trump at the White House, wearing their hard hats and thanking him for trying to reinvigorate their struggling industry.

But on Tuesday dozens of miners and their families will be in a more unusual position: protesting the Trump administration outside the Labor Department building, arguing it has failed to protect them from black lung disease, an incurable illness caused by inhaling coal and silica dust.

They have been waiting months for the government to enforce federal limits on silica dust, a carcinogen that has led to a recent spike in the disease. But mining industry groups have sued to block the rule, and the Trump administration has paused enforcement while the lawsuit plays out.

When in doubt, side with the owners, who will never have to deal with black lung disease.

The federal government has recognized the health threats that coal dust poses since 1969, when Congress passed the Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act, which set health and safety standards for coal mining and required federal inspections and monitoring for black lung disease.

But now, after decades of improvements, the disease has made a disturbing resurgence, particularly among younger workers because of their exposure to a different material: silica dust. Experts said that is in part because of changing mining practices. Most of the thick coal seams in places like Appalachia have already been mined, and workers are increasingly cutting through more rock to reach coal, exposing them to silica dust.

Composed of tiny crystals that can lodge in lung tissue, silica dust can cause inflammation and scarring when inhaled. It is considered about 20 times more toxic to the lungs than coal dust and can also cause lung cancer and kidney disease.

…

A 2018 study found that more than 10 percent of coal miners who had been working for at least 25 years had black lung disease. In Kentucky, Virginia and West Virginia, home to most of the miners who planned to travel to the Tuesday rally, up to 20 percent of veteran miners suffer from lung disease caused by dust.

“It’s not the coal that’s getting them, it’s the silica,” said Mr. Martin, who paused to cough and catch his breath every few minutes during a recent interview. “We need to get this done for the younger generation.”

Limits on silica exposure were supposed to take effect in April. But the National Sand Stone and Gravel Association, the National Mining Association and other industry groups asked a federal appeals court to block the rule, citing the cost to mine operators.

In other words the industry groups are trying to suffocate more workers. They wouldn’t put it that way of course, but that is what they’re doing.

The Trump administration did not defend the rule in court. Instead, it agreed to delay enforcement and has since petitioned the court to prevent labor unions and a lung health association from intervening in the case. This month it asked for another court delay, citing the government shutdown.

That’s Trump, the workers’ friend – working to keep unions and lung health experts locked out of rulings on health and safety regulations for workers.

Democrats and labor unions accused the Trump administration of using coal miners as backdrops for photo opportunities while ignoring their health needs.

“The Trump administration was handed tools to protect black lung and they are doing everything in their power to toss those rules in the trash,” said Jason Walsh, executive director of the BlueGreen Alliance, a partnership of labor unions and environmental organizations.

Senator Tim Kaine, Democrat of Virginia, said abandoning the silica standards “would be a real slap in the face for those who work so hard to power our communities.”

Slap in the face and hard punch in the lungs.

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Aesthetics.

And of course those are ‘safe’ questions, meant to be answered with a Biblical citation, to comfort ‘doubters’. Note the lack of, “Explain childhood leukemia, you fucker!”

No, nothing so blunt is going to have survived the sanitizing, homogenizing editorial committee that came up with this display of architectural temporary tattoos, but even the questions that have made it through the winnow of orthodoxy are not so safe, if you’re prepared to look beyond the Bible for answers, or decline to recognize its authority or relevence. (Some of the questions below are from other images taken of the exhibit, more details of which can be found here: https://www.canterbury-cathedral.org/whats-on/events/hear-us/ )

Q: “Are you there?”

A: No, there are no gods.

Q:”Does our struggle mean anything?”

A: No, it is not part of any “plan.” Shit happens for no intrinsic reason. We can bring reason to it, extract meaning and wisdom from things that happen, and apply them to what we do, but these things were not “put” there for us to “discover”. We build meaning from scratch. Life is not “meaningless”, but the meaning and significance we find is the meaning and significance we add to it. Life isn’t a piñata. Reality is not a fortune cookie. The stars are not there for horoscopes. The universe is what it is. We’re the ones adding the baggage.

Q: “Where does love come from?”

A: Love is a natural evolved sentiment which can be seen in animals other than humans. It does not require the interventions or manipulations of a non-existent class of supernatural beings, just like sunlight or metabolism. Gods add nothing to the picture.

Q: “Do you want company?”

A: Granting the existence of the Christian god, he might not need “company”, depending on how exactly that whole “Holy Trinty” thingy works. Historically speaking, most religions have been polytheistic, with lots of gods to keep each other company, and to squabble with. Some saint-heavy flavours of Christianity can start to look awfully polytheistic to the unwary and uninitiated, who might not see the distinction-without-a-difference that such Christians would offer in indignant protest. Technically, fictional characters can’t really be lonely, or sad, or anything. They have no existence beyond the imaginations of the people who create or read the stories of which they are a part. However real they may seem, they are never going to drive you to bingo, or shovel your walk.

Q: “God, what happens when we die?”

A: Asking a non-existent entity a question like this is a category error. There is no god to answer your question. Any “theological” answer you might receieve has been formulated by humans. Gods don’t write books, or talk to people, or answer prayers because they can’t. Some might claim that these answers come from a god, but it’s humans all the way down. But if you want to know what happens, here it is: you decompose, and all the materials that resided momentarily in/as your body are released for use elsewhere, including other bodies. There is no personal, individual, conscious survival after death. There is no judgement, punishment, or reward. “You” just aren’t, just like “you” weren’t before you were born. Nothing different, and there’s no reason to believe otherwise. We are fleeting arangements of eternal ingedients, briefly collected into and maintained in a form that is aware of itself and the Universe which gave rise to it. We cannot help but be one with everything. Adding gods to this tale short-circuits the proper appreciation of the Universe, and tends to exaggerate our role within it. We are part of an awe-inspiring, terrible wonder, and a mystery, and a miracle, but not a religious one. We have learned that on our own; no gods need apply. No gods can apply.

No. Wrong way around. It’s not that people who say your videos are bad are making personal attacks when they should be addressing the substance of what you say. It’s that you’re bad people, which we already know because of all the bad things you have done, out in the open. You hate and sneer at and bully women, and you pretend you are women yourselves when of course you are men. That’s the problem here, not the fact that so many people are repulsed by you and your videos.

Tom Harris in the Telegraph:

That is how events played out this weekend when the Brighton Centre played host to FiLiA, a Europe-wide feminist campaigning organisation who held their annual conference in the city. You might be forgiven for believing that the Sussex venue would be ideal for a conference debating women’s and girls’ rights. Brighton, after all, is Britain’s San Francisco, known for its high proportion of gay and trans citizens and a generally progressive outlook.

That’s just it though. The two don’t march together any more. Women and girls’ rights are one thing and trans ideology is another. The “gay” umbrella is full of gaping holes that let the rain in, because lesbians don’t necessarily want to be inclooosive of men who call themselves lesbians, and men who idennify as lesbians are intensely hostile to gender critical lesbians.

You would be mistaken, however. The city “welcomed” the conference the night before it was due to open by sending along a gang of masked men who smashed windows and spray-painted graffiti on its walls in protest at the women being allowed to gather there.

Let’s face it, women over the age of 11 are a menace. They should all be locked up. It’s good enough for Kabul, so why not for Brighton?

Even worse, one of the city’s MPs offered no support to the delegates. Sian Berry, who represents Brighton Pavilion for the Green Party, tweeted that: “Events that inflame division and create tension should be guarded against and [Brighton and Hove Council] needs better policies for which events it will host in our council-owned venues. The choice of Brighton was clearly provocative from organisers and the problems predictable.”

Note how an elected representative makes such great effort to avoid blaming the vandals and thugs who carried out this act of intimidation; look how she blames the women taking part in the conference for “provoking” innocent men into breaking the law against their will. 

We did. We noted. We looked. We objected.

Imagine Raphael Warnock tweeted about anti-racism activists being “provocative” by choosing Yazoo City, Mississippi for a conference. Yes, that would be “provocative” in the sense of provoking attention to a long history of racism, and that’s a good thing. Brighton is way too much on the side of people who have decided women are the oppressor class. Brighton needs some provoking.

Does this victim blaming sound at all familiar? As the Labour MP Jonathan Hinder tweeted: “Why did she wind him up? She knows he’s got a bad temper!”

We know the trans army has a bad temper. We think it needs to learn to control that temper.

t wasn’t just the Greens who shamed themselves by their behaviour; their progressive stablemates, the Liberal Democrats, after reports of the night time attack, were only too happy to crow about how their own conference had been free from such violence and vandalism: “We thought the Brighton Centre looked much better when the [LibDems] had our conference there a year ago,” tweeted the party’s LGBT section.

Maybe that’s because Sir Ed Davey’s party is careful not to say anything that might upset certain sections of the community who are ever ready to slip on their size 12 stilettos and do some damage to anyone who disagrees with them. In this way, they guarantee “protection” for their events…

No no no it’s because they are so vulnerable.

Isn’t it?

Making up the triumvirate of shame was the Labour Party, which controls the local council and which refused to provide security protection for the women using one of its venues on the entirely unconvincing basis that it would be “disproportionate”, and not at all because they wanted to keep on the good side of the many trans people in Brighton who currently vote for them.

So interesting. Men bullying women is not disproportionate; stopping men bullying women is. Why’s that?

[T]he right of women to congregate and talk about their own safety is being fatally compromised. If female MPs like Sian Berry from allegedly “progressive” parties can no longer be expected to stand in defence of those rights, then who can?

The footsoldiers.

Originally a comment by Papito on The liberal capitulators.

Apropos of strange bedfellows…

Now, faced with an economy crippled by war and sanctions, the Islamic republic is promoting its expertise to a global audience, hoping to attract transgender foreigners with the promise of inexpensive surgeries packaged with luxury hotel stays and sightseeing tours.

Desperate for foreign investment, Iran’s theocratic government has set a goal of generating more than $7 billion from medical tourism annually, according to Iranian state news media, about seven times as much as it earned last year. That objective has resulted in the proliferation of medical tourism companies, marketing not just nose jobs and hair transplants, but vaginoplasties, mastectomies and penis constructions through glossy English-language websites.

The article is full of the sort of pandering we’re used to – calling men “she” and women “he” if they want that, and bemoaning the terrible suffering of the “non-binary.” But the reality peeks through: Westerners are going on medical tourist junkets to Iran to get operations on their sexual organs because Iranian surgeons do this more than anybody, and do it for cheap. They’ve been practicing on all the gay people in Iran for decades.

I wonder what’s next for Iran. Perhaps they can start doing implants. They could match the organs they forcibly remove from the nation’s gays to Western sex surgery tourists and do simultaneous surgeries to maximize success. A unconscious gay tied to bed one, behind a curtain, and a self-hating Western lesbian getting the medical bargain of her life in bed two. Everybody wins, the trans and the theocrats. Well, except the gays. they don’t win.

Of course, the trans recipients would feel sad about the butchered gays for a couple days, but on the other hand, they’d be happy too.

Eric, a 45-year-old trans man living in Canada who requested anonymity to protect himself and his family from reprisals, said he had sought treatment in Iran because it was cheap. But he acknowledged the tension in seeking treatment in a place where others have it forced on them.

“I have heard a lot, especially among trans women, that because they are gay, and they cannot be gay in Iran, they try to do the surgery,” said Eric. “I’m really sad that gays and lesbians are not recognized in Iran, but on the other hand I’m happy for trans people because they can do what they’re willing to do.”

Well, we know what’s going on here.

London Mosque bans girls over 12 and women from charity park run

Girls over 12 are women: they can get pregnant, therefore they might get pregnant, therefore they have to be monitored and excluded and controlled at all times. All female people are sluts, and when they’re old enough to get pregnant from slutting, it’s time to exclude them and lock them up and terrorize them. If they rebel, it’s time to kill them.

A mosque has banned women and girls over the age of 12 from competing in a charity park run.

The fundraising event, called the Muslim Charity Run and organised by East London Mosque, follows a 5km route and takes place on Sunday. However, the event has been accused of discrimination for allowing only men, boys of any age and girls aged 12 and under to take part.

Well, of course it’s discrimination. Female people 12 and older are banned. That’s discrimination.

After being alerted to the event’s entry criteria, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) said it would assess the case, The Mail on Sunday reported.

Baroness Shaista Gohir, the chief executive of the Muslim Women’s Network UK, said the East London Mosque was “likely” in breach of the Equality Act.

Aisha Ali-Khan, a human rights campaigner, posted on X: “It’s wrong for the East London Mosque to ban women and girls over 12 from taking part in their annual park run. Being healthy and fit is a big part of Islam for all Muslims, not just the men!”

Yes but you see men don’t get pregnant. That’s the stumbling block. If a 13-year-old girl runs in a race she might get pregnant. Now do you see the danger?

Ah yes, the old “I’m not an abusive rageaholic bully, I’m a fierce warrior for justice” ploy.

The Times:

A council refused to grant a legal order shielding a feminist organisation from antisocial behaviour hours after trans activists smashed up its conference venue.

More than 2,000 people are due to attend the three-day conference hosted by Filia, which started on Friday. Organisers say the twice-yearly event is aimed at defending women’s rights and challenging sex-based injustices.

On Thursday night, under the cover of darkness, masked transgender rights campaigners attacked the venue in Brighton.

The activists, who call themselves “Bash Back”, later released video on social media of them smashing the glass frontage of the Brighton Centre, which they said was hosting a conference that would be attended by “hate groups”.

Yes, you know: groups that hate violence against women, rape, bullying, forgetting that women exist, all that stuff. So hatey.

The organisers of the conference told The Times that on Monday this week they submitted an urgent application to Brighton and Hove city council for a public spaces protection order (PSPO) over fears of an attack. Local authorities can issue an order to prevent nuisances or antisocial behaviour in public areas.

Filia said in its application that it expected trans rights activists to target the conference and try to disrupt the proceedings.

Legal papers submitted to the council cited an Instagram post from a group called the Trans Liberation Front on September 18. It described the conference as “Europe’s Largest Transphobic Convention” and invited protesters to “wear a mask and something colourful” and to “bring signs and noisemakers”.

Women must not be allowed to meet and discuss and have thoughts. Women must be drowned out and terrorized by angry men or the world will fall to pieces.

On Friday morning, after the vandalism of the night before, Brighton and Hove city council wrote back to Filia refusing their application.

Now that we see how urgent the need is, we refuse.

Canterbury Cathedral is in the news for having an art installation in the form of graffiti. The medium is removable stickers as opposed to being painted directly on the walls, so I don’t feel obliged to get very indignant about it. I do think it’s butt-ugly though.

I’m just not a fan of the style. Sorry not sorry.

Since we’re on the subject of art and fandom…there’s this muralist in Seattle who’s considered very hot shit, and his work is everywhere. Until very recently I thought it was a style as opposed to one guy, because I kept seeing it all over the city. You can see where this is going – I hate his work. I think it’s hideous, and I hate the fact that there’s so damn much of it. So I’m curious to see if anyone here likes it.

He’s very keen on the local mythical beast the sasquatch, and has done many renditions of it. He signs all this work with “henry” in a cartoon bubble.

I just think that’s ugly. It’s fine as a doodle in your own living room, but plastered all over the city…not so much. Am I crazy?

If you’re curious and want to see more, googling “henry murals seattle” produces a torrent.

Julie Bindel on the fad for bullying women:

As I headed to the conference, I saw the news on social media that trans activists had, in the middle of the night, smashed one of the large front windows of the conference centre, daubed slogans in paint, and put out warnings that they were having a call to arms. We walked past the usual array of blue-haired idiots shouting, “trans women are women”, “sex work is work”, “blowjobs are real jobs”, and “from the river to the sea”. Anything that is bad for women – be it prostitution, Islamic fundamentalism, or trans activism – these people support it.

Islamism and transism make strange bedfellows, and yet, the marriage is going strong.

Since the Supreme Court ruling, these men have become more and more aggressive, and their tactics ever more outlandish, for example, demonstrating in central London against the Supreme Court ruling, during which trans-identifying men urinated in public to make the point about them being “excluded” from women’s bathrooms.

But police almost always do nothing to deter them. Whilst they have arrested or issued warnings to women over the past decade for the terrible crime of “misgendering”, or posting criticism of gender ideology on social media, they don’t do the same [to men] even when the bar is raised much higher – when there are actual violent threats against women, and property destroyed.

There was no police presence this morning at the venue, and throughout the day trans activists have been posting self-congratulatory films of themselves committing criminal damage on the venue.

Because they’re trans and trans people get to do whatever they want all the time. It’s the law.

The liberal capitulators – those that have been going along with the demands of the “Trans Taliban” for all of these years – imploring feminists to “be kind”, or bleating about having a non-binary child who must not be offended, need to recognise they are enabling the worst kind of illiberal, autocratic behaviour. It is high time that all decent people speak out against this behaviour towards women.

Will they?

Nope.