“Sarah” Savage, the guy who pulled the fire alarm because women were holding a meeting, gets attention from the less fastidious news media for being a trans woman who demands all the rights.

The transgender community fears its rights are “melting away” after a legal ruling which has left people “terrified”, according to one trans woman.

Sarah Savage, a trans woman who is the chief executive and co-founder of Trans Pride Brighton, said it was not long ago that trans rights felt “solidified”.

Miss Savage described the ruling as “extremely worrying”, adding she had benefited from access to a women’s refuge after she came out and is now concerned that opportunity has been taken away from others.

Extremely worrying for whom?

He benefited from access to a women’s refuge but the women in that refuge had their benefit taken away. It’s so interesting the way hack journalists forget to point that out, and their editors fail to catch the omission. It’s so interesting the way journalism as such simply ignores this whole issue.

Miss Savage added: “It makes me feel scared for the future because my rights are literally being taken away before my very eyes. What if I need to go to a hospital? Am I going to be treated with respect? What kind of ward am I going to be put in?”

If he is put in a women’s ward, what kind of ward are the women then in? Why is one man’s unreasonable demand treated as a human rights issue while the human rights of the women involved are treated as biggottree?

“Trans people just want to have a quiet life, we just want to get on with it. We don’t want all this drama, we just want respect.”

They just want to get on with taking women’s rights away. As for the drama – you have got to be kidding. They love the drama – it’s all about them.

A director of community group TransActual, jane fae – who spells her name in lower case – also expressed concern about her potential future care.

“As I get older I may need hospital care, I foresee being forced into the indignity of being on a male ward, that would be upsetting to say the least,” the 67-year-old from Letchworth told PA.

Same again. Does he worry that the women who had to put up with him in their ward would find it upsetting? Of course not. His wants are everything, theirs are just something he gets to drive a tank through.

The shouty man in question is Sarah Savage.

He’s not a threat, oh good heavens no, but if women dare to have a meeting he will make sure to shut that right down. Which is in no way a threat. At all.

Large loud aggressive man tells us how he terminated a meeting of women by pulling the fire alarm, and shouts angrily about how fearless he is and how he will not let this go.

New boss even worse than the old boss.

Smith College tells us about its four commencement speakers for this year.

Four distinguished leaders in the arts, academia, health and wellness, social justice, and innovation will be awarded honorary degrees at Smith’s 147th Commencement on Sunday, May 18. In a tradition begun last year by President Sarah Willie-LeBreton, each honorand will offer a few words of wisdom and congratulations to the graduates.

Did I mention that Smith is a women’s college?

Honorary degrees will be awarded in May to:

• Danielle Allen, professor of political philosophy, public policy, and ethics at Harvard University and founder and chairperson of Partners In Democracy.
• Evelyn M. Harris, vocal teacher, former member of the world-renowned a cappella group Sweet Honey in the Rock, and a global performer for more than 50 years.
• Admiral Rachel L. Levine, 17th assistant secretary for health for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, accomplished physician, public health expert, and LGBTQ+ advocate.

And a man. Admiral Levine is a man. That’s an award that won’t go to a woman, because the good people at Smith wanted it to go to a man who playacts being a woman.

Smith devotes a lot of space to Levine’s bio, and doesn’t once mention that he’s a man, or even trans. Just she she she her her her. Women’s college insults women, news at 10.

In another, but very nearby, corner of the forest another court with another ruling.

The Trump administration on Friday asked the Supreme Court to block a judge’s ruling that had temporarily paused plans for mass layoffs and program closures at federal agencies.

A judge paused plans for mass layoffs and program closures at federal agencies?? That’s so shocking! All federal agencies are bad, and everything federal agencies do is bad. Obviously! The people should all be fired and the programs should all be slammed shut. Nothing should ever be done for any reason other than profit.

Last week, Judge Susan Illston of the Federal District Court for the Northern District of California called for a two-week pause on the administration’s actions, which she said were illegal without congressional authorization. Her order barred two dozen federal agencies from moving ahead with the largest phase of President Trump’s efforts to downsize the government.

In the emergency application filed on Friday, D. John Sauer, the solicitor general, argued that the lower court’s “far-reaching order” would prevent “almost the entire executive branch from formulating and implementing plans to reduce the size of the federal work force.”

Could that be because the entire executive branch was “reducing the size of the federal work force” by simply firing masses of people without bothering to find out what they were doing and how necessary it was?

In February, Mr. Trump signed an executive order directing officials to draft plans for “large-scale” cuts to the federal work force. Several labor unions, advocacy groups and local governments sued, seeking to block the order.

Judge Illston held an emergency hearing in the case last Friday and issued her ruling just hours later.

In the 42-page ruling, Judge Illston determined that the government’s attempt to lay off workers and shut down offices and programs created an urgent threat to scores of critical services.

It’s as if Trump told the Pentagon to bomb federal agencies into oblivion without pausing to preserve the buildings or allow the occupants to send a goodbye message home.

Trump does not have a close acquaintance with the law, but that doesn’t slow him down any.

President Donald Trump endorsed the idea that the United States Supreme Court had placed an “illegal injunction” on him by temporarily blocking his administration’s ability to deport Venezuelans, accused of being gang members, without due process, while litigation on the matter plays out in lower courts.

On Truth Social on Saturday, Trump reposted two posts made by attorney Mike Davis, a close Trump ally and the founder of the Article III project, calling the court’s recent decision “illegal” and claiming it was “heading down a perilous path” by not allowing Trump to continue a constitutionally questionable action.

“The Supreme Court still has an illegal injunction on the President of the United States, preventing him from commanding military operations to expel these foreign terrorists,” Davis wrote.

…

The court told the Trump administration on Friday it would  not allow it to resume deporting Venezuelans accused of belonging to a gang under the Alien Enemies Act while litigation continues in lower courts. In their decision, the justices flagged concerns about the administration bypassing due process rights.

Trump raged at the justices for not allowing his Department of Homeland Security to proceed with deportations under the act, calling it “bad” and “dangerous.”

Not his call. Co-equal branches, babe.

Saturday’s endorsement of the idea that the Supreme Court, the ultimate decider of law, was carrying out an “illegal” act on him by not allowing him to do something that lower courts have also consistently ruled against, is part of a recent trend.

The trend of being completely ignorant of the law? That’s not recent.

Trump and his administration have been accused of defying federal judges’ rulings – most notably not facilitating the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia despite the Supreme Court directing the administration to do so.

The president has personally lashed out at judges who have ruled against him, asserting they are “rogue” or “activists.” Roberts and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson have both warned that attacking judges is harmful to the independence of the judiciary.

His behavior has led to some concerns from critics that the president will ignore court orders and continue doing whatever he wants with the help of his allies in the government, thus overextending his presidential power.

Gosh ya think?

Surely it’s obvious that that’s exactly what he intends to do. He intends to do whatever he wants and accept no restraint from anyone or anything.

It’s hard not to suspect a new Sokal Hoax.

I mean come on. “According to this definition pregnancy or the potential for pregnancy define womanhood.” Well yes, Genius, they do. If you look you’ll find that that applies to other mammals too. You know what there would be if they didn’t? Nothing, that’s what. Without reproduction there is nothing. P.D. James wrote a novel about that very scenario – a world in which human reproduction had simply stopped. In a world like that it takes only a few decades for living humans to disappear entirely. Not just thin out, not just become scarce, but go extinct. Like the dinosaurs. Get it?

It’s too obvious not to get. Must be a new Sokal.

The rest of the burble is just typical pomo litcrit word-flapping. A genre of political, aesthetic, and affective experience and expectation. Burble burble burble. Admire the clever academic with the fancy words like “affective” and “genre.” The childish “trick” here is just to pretend that because there’s more to say about pregnancy than the biological facts, therefore the biological facts are wholly irrelevant. Yuh huh. There’s more to say about a sunset than the astronomical facts, therefore the earth does not rotate.

Human ingenuity.

Seattle Councilmember Dan Strauss is worried about Seattle’s ears. 

Earlier this spring, he drafted a “hearing protection ordinance” that would require music venues to provide hearing protection for free or less than $1, or risk fines. 

“This bill is about making sure that people have the opportunity to both enjoy Seattle’s vibrant music scene and protect their hearing health no matter where they go,” Strauss said when presenting the idea to his colleagues in March. 

Well…that’s like going swimming with the sharks while taking a box of bandaids with you. It’s like going to an all-you-can-eat restaurant with a bottle of diet pills in your pocket. It’s like setting your house on fire and then putting on asbestos socks.

In short, why would you go to a concert that you know will be too loud? Why not select concerts that are not too loud, instead? Think of the fortune you would save on ear plugs.

One of the many things I hate most about Trump

(It’s supposed to be only one of those – many things OR hate most – but with Trump it’s always both, because he always has all the toppings. There are many many things about him that I hate the most. I wish it were otherwise, but it isn’t.)

is the way he does the bad thing times 10 or 100 or 1000. He has no artistry, no restraint, no sense of Less is More. Every damn time he just jumps in with both feet and dials the abuse to a million. It should handicap him, but of course it doesn’t, because there’s no justice. The stupider his reaction to X the more his fans just love it.

The latest is “Oooh James Comey said a mean thing about Trump—>treason death penalty dirty cop blah blah.”

The Post is slightly more restrained:

Trump administration officials said Thursday that they would investigate former FBI director James B. Comey, whom they accused of threatening President Donald Trump after Comey posted a picture of seashells on a beach arranged to spell out “86 47.”

Trump is the 47th president; “86” can mean banning or removing someone, but it can also be slang for killing a person.

But at the same time, “86” can be slang for killing a person, but it can also mean banning or removing someone. It’s a choice to decide it definitely means killing That Person. Trump of course made the choice, and then turned it into Shouting Drama Exaggeration War, because he can’t see anything that’s not bigger than the sun.

“Cool shell formation on my beach walk,” Comey wrote in the original Instagram post, which he quickly removed after claims that the phrase communicated the threat of violence. In a follow-up post, Comey wrote that he assumed the shells he saw “were a political message” but said he was not advocating violence.

Trump insisted in a TV interview that Comey “knew exactly” what it meant.

“If you’re the FBI director and you don’t know what that meant, that meant assassination,” Trump told Fox News in an interview scheduled to air Friday evening. “And it says it loud and clear.”

But of course that’s exactly what it doesn’t do. Some seashells. Four numbers. A couple of numbers that can mean kill or escort to the exit. It’s very far from a loud and clear “Kill Trump.”

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said on Fox News that she believes Comey should be in jail because of the post and accused him of “issuing a hit” on Trump.

Yeah right, that’s what that was.

I didn’t realize Pride had gone homophobic. I’m so old I remember when Pride was all about lesbians and gay men.

Stroud Pride says no LGB views.

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Woman’s hour for men.

It’s funny how the BBC feels compelled to trot out all these spokespeople who are wringing their hands at having been caught out essentially breaking the law, and how following the law is going to be such a burden and hardship. How many voices of women who are happy with the judgement are they going to feature? What’s the ratio of whiners who claim the decision is “wrong,” to women who are relieved that someone has finally listened to their concerns? Four to one? Ten to one? The BBC is certainly doing its best to browbeat people into where it believes their sympathies and concerns should reside, and it’s not with women.

All these men who are being pushed back out of women’s spaces knew they were male. They all knew they were taking advantage of a “loophole” they themselves had punched through the law. They knew they were cheating. They knew they were invading women’s spaces. They’ve been trying to normalize this violation and occupation ever since. Now that that breach in the law has been noted and flagged for repair, they’re squealing “VICTIM!” when they were the aggressors.

Did the BBC ever report on the original story of men invading women’s spaces? That was the “Man bites dog!” moment of aberration that was the real story, not this redress of women’s grievances for offences against them which should never been allowed to occur in the first place but which were aided, abetted and normalized by the BBC itself. Instead, we get all this noise and fuss over (what should be) the non-story of “Men are not Women.”

Onward.

…we should remember that sadly trans people are very affected by domestic violence as of course are are other women – and those people have said “we know how to run our services, we know how to protect people in those services, um, we know how to safeguard, we do that for all individuals from other individuals, those are protected before this judgement they still are now, nothing changes, we’re open for trans people” – uh – that is really important and it is very welcome that we’re hearing that – we’re also hearing people uh hearing trans people saying things like “I don’t know if I can go to the gym any more – I’m I’m afraid even to leave my home” because actually people are using the judgement perhaps as an excuse to um abuse me on the street which of course is not what the Supreme Court said should happen – so that sort of implication from the judgement I think now we really need to see some calm and

Ok hang on a second – sorry to interrupt but if you refuse to end a sentence now and then I have no choice – if now we really need to see some calm why are you burbling this alarmist bullshit? You are not saying anything calming. You are also, of course, as Amnesty always does on this subject, wringing your hands over trans people while insinuating that women are bullying and harming them. If we really need to see some calm how about you stop monstering women?

…some calm and emphasis on the protection of trans people, which the law very clearly says.

There! Finally the sentence ends!

I think maybe that’s enough of Mister Amnesty now. He’s not very good at it.

Woman’s Hour had a bro from Amnesty International on today to explain why it’s still fine to take women’s rights away and give them to men. That segment starts at 18:19.

We’re currently hearing different perspectives this week on the Supreme Court ruling last month that the terms “woman” and “sex” in the 2010 Equality Act refer to a biological woman and biological sex. The judgement has implications for many organizations.

Well yes, the fact that “woman” means “woman” does have implications. It always did. The claim that “woman” could also mean “man” provided he cleared the massive hurdle of saying so – that claim also had implications. Rather intrusive and annoying ones, actually.

We’re looking at the practical dilemmas the ruling creates for organizations, businesses and individuals.

Yes it’s a real dilemma, isn’t it – let men invade the women’s toilets and changing rooms, or no? Must keep everyone awake for hours ever night.

So she talks to Sasha from Amnesty International about the “impacts” of the ruling. He says trans people are “facing discrimination, facing harassment.”

We have been hearing from a number of people, trans people, who, sadly, and this has been a long-standing issue in society in the UK and around the world, are very fearful, facing discrimination, facing harassment – that was one of the reasons Amnesty put evidence in front of the Supreme Court, we work on human rights all around the world, we believe in everyone’s right to privacy, a family life, to be protected from discrimination, and wanted to make sure that the Supreme Court heard those arguments – I think the judgement in this case – it was a long judgement, it was about 30 pages or so, lots of detail, the court was quite precise about what it was making a judgement on – and indeed on things it also wanted to see, like discrimination against trans people – absolutely not allowed in the law –

Interrupting to apologize for the fact that the sentence never comes to an end, but that’s because it doesn’t. The man doesn’t speak in sentences, he speaks in one endless sentence.

absolutely not allowed in the law – perhaps some people are kind of rushing to judgement as to what exactly the judgement means, how to implement it – and I’d urge some caution because I think that’s causing a lot of fear and a lot of anxiety and even sense of threat for a lot of trans people at the moment –

Finally the presenter, tired of waiting for the sentence to end, breaks in.

What have they been saying to you?

Well – sometimes we’re hearing things actually it’s important to recognize are really important and good – so for example we’ve heard recently from a number of organizations that run refuges for people who have been affected by domestic violence we should remember that sadly trans people are very affected by domestic violence as of course are are other women.

Oops. Telling. He tripped himself up there. He can’t finish a sentence but he can talk rapidly without repeating himself – until that “are are” when he has to admit that actual women are also beaten up or killed by men. You don’t say, kid. That second “are” may be a tiny flinch of shame at the fact that he’s claiming women are also rans when it comes to domestic violence – that the usual victim, the normal victim, the expected victim, is a man pretending to be a woman.

I think I’ll take a break there. He’s irritating to listen to, let alone transcribe.

It’s like walking through three feet of mud carrying a piano. Progress is infinitesimal.

Guidance issued by an NHS hospital would allow men identifying as women to use female changing rooms, despite warnings that the policy breaks the law.

Officials from the Royal College of Nursing wrote to senior administrators at the County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust to warn that Darlington Memorial Hospital was breaching 33-year-old workplace legislation that requires the provision of single-sex changing facilities for men and women.

And by the way they’re also acting like sadistic women-hating shits.

It has now emerged that in the last week of March officials at the royal college — the professional body for nurses in the UK — wrote to a director at the trust to complain that it was in breach of the Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992.

The college pointed out that those regulations required “the provision of single-sex changing facilities for men and women — the only exception being where the provision is of single lockable rooms (not cubicles)”.

The official said that the college was flagging the statutory position “given the ongoing legal dispute and internal investigation” around the dispute over a transgender nurse at the hospital. The letter added that “the regulations also appear to have been overlooked by other organisations”, before stating that the college “expects the trust to comply with these statutory provisions and provide single-sex changing rooms without delay”.

And by “overlooked” they mean “deliberately ignored so as to make men happy at the expense of women.”

However, campaigners representing the women have said that three days after the letter was sent, the trust director re-published its “transitioning in the workplace policy”, without any changes to the guidance, which, it is claimed, said that a biological man can change in the female staff changing rooms.

Charming. “Not only will we not obey, we will make a point of announcing our insistence on treating women like floor sweepings. You’re welcome.”

What Trump is destroying:

Scientists behind some of the most important breakthroughs in Northwest scientific research over the past two decades have left their jobs in the wake of budget cutting by the Trump administration.

The federal government has terminated science experiments, canceled research contracts, set spending limits for travel and purchases to $1 and created uncertainty at the Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle, a flagship of scientific research at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

I pass that flagship quite often on the bus. It’s near the Arboretum and the University, and right next to a Yacht Club. NOAA itself is a few miles northeast, on Lake Washington.

The science center has lost about 30 people, according to Nick Tolimieri, president of the fisheries chapter of the IFPTE Local 8A (a union leader for about 200 center employees in the bargaining unit). While science still continues at the center, many of those lost were scientists with significant experience.

The Trump administration had offered buyouts to agency staff to encourage early retirements as it seeks to cut the federal workforce.

To cut just for the sake of cutting, without taking into account the value of what they were throwing out.

Options to take early retirement, finalized last week, represent the loss of thousands of hours of research expertise honed in the Northwest’s rivers and urban streams, and probing the lives of the most revered wildlife species, including salmon and southern resident orcas.

The Times interviewed five of these scientists.

• Sarah Morley built a deep understanding of the food web and hydrology of urban streams and Northwest rivers.
• Mike Ford revealed just how inbred the southern resident killer whales are, a never-before understood element in their struggle to survive.
• Lynne Barre helped lead the world’s first successful rescue of a stranded baby killer whale, even returning the animal to her pod, where she has since gone on to bear two calves.
• George Pess has been a leader in fisheries science and management since 1989 and the “papa bear” — as he is lovingly referred to — of the interdisciplinary team of scientists gathering data on the Elwha River before dam removal, then the world’s largest, to be able to understand the impacts of a historic intervention for fisheries recovery.
• Nat Scholz helped crack the code on which chemical in tire dust is killing coho in urban streams before they spawn.

Penny wise and pound foolish much?

Many of the retired scientists are now seeking to continue their work — as volunteers, if the paperwork needed to do so will be approved by new leaders at NOAA, Morley said. But will it? To her these budget cuts weren’t about reducing spending at all, but shutting down the science itself, making their work, even done for free, unwelcome.

“These cuts have nothing to do with saving money,” she said. “It is about silencing people and destroying science.”

Penny stupid and pound foolish.

Ya it’s always encouraging to see public safety unions shouting that men are women and that women should shut up.

The interim guidance is unworkable, unhelpful and will only lead to an increase in discrimination for workers, including in fire stations and in control rooms. Trans people are not a threat. Gender-based violence and misogyny are.

Trans ideology is misogyny, and it triggers violence against women.

Gary Lineker was talking to Oliver Brown at the Telegraph when he said that stupid thing. He said a lot of stupid things in that talk.

And for Lineker, the subject of right and wrong is simpler than it may be for others.

“You either have empathy or you don’t,” he says. “It’s more important now than ever before that people raise their voices, because we live in dangerous times. I’ll definitely continue pushing humanitarian issues. Sometimes they cross over with politics, although I’ve never been overly loud with my politics. Nobody knows who I vote for – I’ve voted for lots of different parties over many years. You feel sometimes like you’re fairly helpless, like you can’t really do anything. But you have to live with yourself. That’s the important thing.”

Ah. That would explain a lot. No, that’s not the important thing. Self is not the important thing when talking about injustice to other people. It’s the other people who are the important thing. Not you, them.

One other area where Lineker has been noticeably silent is a subject where centrist-dad equivocations are difficult: men masquerading in sport as women. This has been front-page news in his own realm, with the Football Association forced this month to ban males from all levels of the female game, honouring the Supreme Court’s ruling that the definition of a woman was based on biological sex. And yet Lineker has consistently swerved it. When his podcast, The Rest Is Football, tried a public question-and-answer experiment last November, Martina Navratilova, Sharron Davies and hundreds of other women asked him what he thought of the FA banning a teenager – revealed by The Telegraph last weekend as Cerys Vaughan – for asking a transgender opponent: “Are you a man?” Even under pressure from a nine-time Wimbledon singles champion and a celebrated Olympic swimmer, he neglected to engage. Why?

“Ugh,” he sighs, slumping so far forward in his chair he nearly hits the table. “You can’t cover that subject properly in a post. It’s too nuanced. I don’t actually think, in terms of sport, that it will ever be a real issue. Sport, as it’s already doing, will sort it out and work out rules. Like they did in boxing, when they realised they couldn’t have heavyweights against little fellas.”

Is it not blindingly obvious, however, that sport will not simply “sort it out”? It has taken many determined female campaigners a punishingly long time to undo the damage of gender ideology, compelling sports to prioritise fairness for women rather than vacuous mantras about inclusion. Amid broad acceptance that the rights of half the population should trump the view of a small, vocal minority of men that they are entitled to colonise women’s sport, Lineker makes it clear where his sympathies lie. “They’re some of the most persecuted on the planet, trans people. You’ve got to be very careful not to have bigoted views on that. I genuinely feel really badly for trans people. Imagine going through what they have to go through in life. Is there even any issue? It’s the same swimmer, the same weightlifter, the same boxer. They’re the only people I ever see.”

Well there you go. He thinks trans people are some of the most persecuted on the planet, so he thinks the women they shove aside are not their victims but their persecutors. Same old crap in same old words.

It’s so fascinating to see men say they just can’t see why women matter.

Gary Lineker surprisingly admitted that he doesn’t see the transgender sport bans as “a real issue” and that the controversy will resolve itself by the relevant authorities. The polarising BBC host described transgender people as “some of the most persecuted on the planet” and admitted that he feels sorry for them amid recent sporting banishments.

More persecuted than women? More persecuted than the women they themselves persecute? Are they? Really?

I wonder if men think this because it’s a sort of worst nightmare thing to them – waking up to find yourself metamorphosed into a [shudder] woman. Creepy doesn’t begin to describe it. Is that it? Poor sad tragic men stuck being [shudder] women – there isn’t enough sympathy and pampering in the world to make up for it. Is that it?

Or is it just garden-variety stupid.

But the nonsense train rumbles on regardless.

An NHS board has failed in its attempt to prevent the public from watching a tribunal about a trans doctor allowed to use a female hospital changing room.

NHS Fife asked the judge overseeing the case brought by the nurse Sandie Peggie to remove public access to an online live stream of the employment tribunal’s proceedings.

Gee I wonder if that’s because NHS Fife is aware that it looks like a pack of women-hating bullies.

But it is understood that Sandy Kemp, the tribunal judge, has ruled that the public should be allowed to watch the case, in line with the principles of open justice. He is also said to have rejected an application by NHS Fife to ban an open justice campaign group from posting live social media updates about the case on X.

…

The first part of the Peggie tribunal was held two months before the Supreme Court ruled in a separate case that access to female-only areas should be based on biological sex.

And now the rest of it will be held after that ruling. Am I gloating? Of course I am.

This week, Ms Peggie welcomed the ruling and challenged NHS Fife to dump its policy of “permitting any man who identifies as a woman access to female-only, single-sex spaces”.

For Women Scotland, the feminist campaign group that won the Supreme Court case, said it was delighted that the tribunal judge had “upheld the principles of open justice” by allowing the public to continue watching proceedings.

Trina Budge, one of the group’s directors, said: “NHS Fife has behaved appallingly in seeking to have the remainder of this case heard behind closed doors.

All this bullying and sneaking and lying and whining in aid of men who pretend to be women. Just imagine if women had ever had a tenth of the support that men in lipstick have been rejoicing in for years.

Silly me, I thought I had already posted about this hours ago, promptly after listening to it. I thought wrong.