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.

After a bit of exploration it looks to me as if the serious news outlets are cautious about calling gender magic “medical treatment.” NPR may be an outlier in calling it that.

The Boston Globe came the closest in the selection I was offered:

Under federal pressure, Fenway Health ends gender-affirming medical care for trans patients under 19

But of course “affirming” that a patient is the gender/sex she/he is not is not medical care. The Globe should stand with NPR in the corner.

But it’s good to see that not all news outlets make that mistake, at least not every single time.

Which is it, NPR? Medical care or gender affirming care? They are NOT the same thing. More like opposites.

Title:

Trump pushes an end to medical care for transgender youth nationally

Lede:

Access to gender-affirming care for transgender youth will be dramatically restricted by the Trump administration under new proposals by the Department of Health and Human Services.

“Gender-affirming care” is not medical care. It may be carried out under medical auspices, but it’s not medical. It doesn’t treat any illness or injury, it doesn’t repair or mitigate any handicap, it doesn’t make recipients more healthy, it doesn’t inoculate against any disease. It’s arguably medical malpractice.

It does apparently make some people happier than they were, and being happier is a good thing, but it’s a very risky way of going about it, and is disastrous for some. The happiness can last a tragically short time and morph into anguish that doesn’t go away. In any case it remains not medical.

Both supporters and opponents of transgender rights agree that, taken together, the forthcoming rules could make access to pediatric gender-affirming care across the country extremely difficult, if not impossible. The care is already banned in 27 states.

Stop right there, NPR. Opponents of “gender-affirming care” don’t agree that the rules could make access to pediatric gender-affirming care across the country difficult, because they don’t consider it care. It’s neither established fact nor obvious that cutting off teenage girls’ breasts and teenage boys’ penises is any kind of care. There are people who loudly claim it is, but they’re wrong.

“These rules would be a significant escalation in the Trump administration’s attack on access to transgender health care,” says Katie Keith, director of the Center for Health Policy and the Law at Georgetown University.

Again. It’s not health care. It may be attempted health care, or attempted relief of psychological misery, but that’s not the same as health care. Calling it health care is of course yet another way of fooling the public into thinking transing people is more benign and safe and medically sound than it is.

“These rules would be a significant escalation in the Trump administration’s attack on access to transgender health care,” says Katie Keith, director of the Center for Health Policy and the Law at Georgetown University.

…

Instead of health and safety standards, this proposal would instruct hospitals “to stop offering a certain type of care completely to a certain patient population,” she says.

But what if it’s not care? What if it’s the opposite of care? What if it’s mutilation and disrupting puberties? What if it’s all been a horrible mistake that will remind future generations of the lobotomy craze?

“There are real people behind all this,” says Eyer, who is also the parent of a transgender child. “People are really scared and suffering as a result of this onslaught of attacks on the trans community.”

But what if all the maiming and puberty-disrupting are the attacks? What if what is called “transgender care” is really a medical scandal in progress? What if thousands of people are going to spend the rest of their lives wishing they hadn’t fucked up their bodies when they were teenagers? What then???

Gender-affirming care for youth — including puberty blocking medications, hormones, and rarely, surgery — does not actually violate federal law, Eyer notes. And, despite recent political pressure, no major U.S. medical organization has altered their clinical guidance that supports these treatments as appropriate and safe.

Which is shocking. Even if you believe in the ideology it’s hard to see how anyone can be really confident that the mutilations are safe. How can they be sure it’s safe to amputate healthy breasts or genitalia?

I suppose we’ll never know.

There it is! Spotted in the wild. Spelled out for all to see. Women are not in any way a despised or neglected or excluded or ignored or disadvantaged group; women are of the ruling class, women are the dominant and domineering sex, women are the privileged sex, women are invulnerable tyrannical exploiters.

Oh good, Trump is restarting the doomsday machine.

Trump ordered the U.S. military on Thursday to immediately resume testing nuclear weapons after a gap of 33 years, minutes before beginning a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

…

“Because of other countries testing programs, I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis. That process will begin immediately,” Trump posted.

“Russia is second, and China is a distant third, but will be even within 5 years.”

Trump appeared to be sending a message to both Xi, who has more than doubled China’s nuclear warhead arsenal over the past five years, and to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has tested two new nuclear-powered weapons over recent days.

…

Trump’s decision follows a rapid expansion by China of its nuclear stockpile in recent years, and came just after Russia announced what it called successful tests of the nuclear-powered and nuclear-capable cruise missile and nuclear-powered torpedo.

Could all you god damn fools just stop?

Put your hands together for The Dolls.

They’re all men. The women of the year are all men.

The language of this dispute is so corrupted and twisted and inside-out that reporting on it is inevitably a tangle of weeds and thorns. The Telegraph does not escape this trap.

The Liberal Democrats are at war over trans rights after the leadership defied its members and banned biological men from taking women’s posts in the party.

But what are trans rights? Who says? What happens when they cancel the rights of other sets of people? Specifically, the rights of half the population? How do we know the purported rights are rights at all?

On Tuesday, the party banned trans women from taking women’s positions following the Supreme Court’s ruling on biological sex.

Because trans women are men. Men don’t have any right to take women’s positions.

The party’s LGBT+ group condemned the decision as “trans-exclusionary” and an “attack” on one of the country’s most marginalised groups.

Is it a group at all? Who says? What are the criteria? In what sense is it marginalized? Is it more marginalized than women? Who says? What are the criteria?

In other words this stale sloganeering is based on a slew of unexamined assumptions. All those assumptions are bullshit. Let’s delete and start over.

The issue prompted a row at September’s party conference after the group Liberal Voice for Women tried to call a vote to change to party rules that would bring the Lib Dems in line with the Supreme Court ruling on the definition of a woman.

However, delegates voted not to even debate on the motion, indicating they were happy with the rules as they were.

The original rules allowed those who “self-identify as women” to stand for party posts set aside for women, which gender-critical activists said diluted the chance that biological women could reach the top of the party.

Because of course it does. If you let some men stand for party posts set aside for women then there are fewer party posts set aside for women. That’s how that works. If you replace some peaches with bananas, then there are fewer peaches.

After receiving legal advice, the party published the new rules on Tuesday, stating that quotas would be applied to people according to their sex at birth, not with their preferred gender identity.

…

The new rules sparked anger among members of the group LGBT+ Liberal Democrats, writing on X that they “condemn our party’s decision to base internal gender quotas on sex assigned at birth”. It said: “This trans-exclusionary decision is an attack on one of the most vulnerable groups in our society.”

Pampered. The word you’re looking for is “pampered”. Men who pretend to be women are the most pampered group in our society.

The Lib Dems said its rules would also change to ensure that at least one trans person should sit on all its larger committees.

A spokeswoman for Liberal Voice for Women said: “It is good to see the party has taken on board legal advice and is now changing its quotas following the Supreme Court ruling to ensure quotas for women are reserved for women.

“However, we are concerned that the new quota guarantees those with a trans identity at least one place on every committee over 10 people, despite the fact trans people are only 0.5 per cent of the population, alongside the fact there is no evidence they are under-represented on Lib Dem committees.”

Ahhhh but you see they are The Most Marginalised. It says so right here.

Sinister

Two federal prosecutors were informed Wednesday that they will be put on leave after filing a legal brief that described the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol as being carried out by “thousands of people comprising a mob of rioters,” sources familiar with their removals told ABC News. 

So they were put on leave because they filed the brief?

The two prosecutors, Carlos Valdivia and Samuel White, were locked out of their government devices and informed Wednesday morning they will be placed on leave, just hours after they filed a sentencing memorandum in the case of Taylor Taranto, the sources said.  

Were they told why? Were they told it was because they filed the brief?

It’s unclear if Valdivia or White were given a reason for their suspensions, though the moves come following months of turmoil in the Washington, D.C., U.S. attorney’s office where multiple career prosecutors faced removals or demotions related to their involvement in prosecuting the more than 1,500 defendants charged in connection with the Capitol attack. 

Yes, how dare anyone try to prosecute attempts to overthrow an election by violent means.

Down down down the road we go.

Police Scotland ignore the criminal and charge his victim with a crime. You’ll never guess which party is a man and which is a woman.

Parliamentary police officers have ordered a director of For Women Scotland to attend a police station to face vandalism charges over a broken brolly after a complaint by a trans activist.

Susan Smith, one third of the feminist group who took the Scottish Government to the Supreme Court on the definition of a woman and won, has been accused of minor damage to an umbrella at a rally outside the Scottish parliament last month.

But the incident, which could result in Mrs Smith, 54, appearing in a criminal court, has provoked fury and Police Scotland have been accused of ‘remaining under the spell of the SNP’s trans ideology’.

How does Police Scotland live with itself? Minor damage to a fucking umbrella? Which he was using as a shield and weapon in his noisy “protest” of women defending their rights? Why not instead charge him with brandishing a weapon in a woman’s face?

Tom Harlow, who counter-protests dozens of women’s events by blasting music to drown out feminists, has claimed Mrs Smith broke his rainbow-coloured golf brolly after she asked him to turn his music system’s sound down.

Yet both video and still pictures of their 20-second interaction at the Women Won’t Wait event, where high profile feminists including Tracey Edwards, Joanna Cherry, KC, and MSPs Pam Gosal and Ash Regan spoke out, do not appear to reveal any damage.

Well, it was spiritual damage. The umbrella was offended. Its feelings were hurt. It was terrorized by the cruel evil woman refusing to abandon women’s rights.

Harlow, a drag artist and stripper who performs as Cabaret Against The Hate Speech has received funding from the Scottish Government’s quango Creative Scotland. He regularly turns up at events to counter protest at women by blasting music.

He makes a habit of literally drowning out women’s voices, of literally preventing women from having a say, and the cops are charging a woman with damaging his fucking UMBRELLA. The one he was pushing in her face.

It is unclear whether Harlow, whose real name is Thomas Michael Moncrieff Carlin, had permission to counter-protest the Women Won’t Wait event but it is understood that dozens of women there made noise complaints.

During the 90 minute rally, Harlow sat on a folding chair next to his music system as two police officers stood close by. One woman at the event said: ‘Susan literally walked over smiling and asked him politely to turn the music down and he put up his umbrella in her face. She moved around to try and talk to him and he blocked her face again with the brolly.

…

The Mail understands that Mrs Smith will refuse the offer of a warning by police next week and has been told that will mean she will be charged with vandalism.

She could also face bail conditions that may include banning her from Holyrood, the scene of the alleged offence.

She will but he won’t. He’s the aggressor, she’s the target, and the cops are punishing her. It’s way beyond parody at this point.