Don’t mention the women.

It was predictable that August in Edinburgh would see a flare-up of the gender wars. Scottish politics has been pivotal in the UK-wide battle over gender self-identification, and the issue has come up at the Edinburgh festival before. Probably no one would have expected the National Library of Scotland to be the battlefield. But when a bestselling gender-critical anthology, The Women Who Wouldn’t Wheesht, was excluded from a centenary exhibition, that is what happened.

Trying to make the women who wouldn’t wheesht wheesht is a fool’s errand. They told you they wouldn’t wheesht!!

Its editors, Lucy Hunter Blackburn and Susan Dalgety, were already upset when they learned that their book had not been chosen for the Dear Library exhibition. They had not been invited to appear at the Edinburgh book festival either – despite their big-name contributors and hot topic. So they put in a freedom of information request. When it revealed that their book had received four nominations from members of the public, before being rejected at the urging of an LGBTQ+ staff network, they complained.

Last week’s result, after a pointed intervention by Index on Censorship, was an apology and a U-turn. Blackburn, a former civil servant, said it had been “emotional”, and that she would now tell her 97-year-old mother, a retired bookseller, all about it.

This perhaps sounds tame compared with the Irish writer Graham Linehan’s arrest at Heathrow by armed officers, and the row about the policing of tweets that followed.

Nah, it doesn’t, because it’s all the same thing. None of it is tame; all of it is aimed at silencing women entirely.

Blackburn and Dalgety were ignored not only by Edinburgh’s book festival. They have not been invited to any book festivals at all. Nor has Jenny Lindsay, the Scottish author of Hounded, which describes how she was driven out of her career as a poet and arts programmer due to her gender-critical views. There are more than 100 literary festivals in the UK each year, and big ones such as Edinburgh’s feature hundreds of authors.

I was invited to three literary festivals, and am lucky to be able to write about these issues in the Guardian. But I have also been snubbed. Last year the Conway Hall in London refused a booking for a launch of my book, and complaints to other venues where I was appearing were stressful and upsetting.

That’s the goal. Punish women for existing. Needle needle needle. Get all the institutions to tell us to shut up.

Jenny Murray points out an important distinction.

At last, evidence of a bout of common sense in relation to the policing of tweets. Sir Andy Cooke, His Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Constabulary, said this week that non-crime hate incidents should be scrapped and that officers must separate ‘the offensive from the criminal’.

If follows Met Police chief Sir Mark Rowley’s comments that he will talk to new Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood about a proposed change in the law meaning police officers would not be required to record and investigate complaints about tweets unless it is clear the suspect intended real harm and violence.

She notes that this is obviously prompted by what the cops did to Glinner last week.

The tweet may not have been in the best possible taste, but there was certainly a marked contrast between the police response to Linehan’s words and their response to the violent threats meted out by trans activists against women they call TERFS (Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists) like me. While Linehan was arrested, the trans activists making frightening threats to me simply got away with it.

That certainly was a marked contrast, and we’ve been dealing with it for years. The police would never ever lift so much as an eyebrow at abuse and threats aimed at women on social media, but men who pretend to be women are a whole other story.

Why is that exactly? Why do the police see women as so much worthless garbage and men who pretend to be women as infinitely valuable?

As someone who has spent their life championing women’s rights, I have long been appalled by the impact of the Stonewall campaign which pushed trans rights to the detriment of women’s rights. I was not prepared to have breastfeeding dubbed ‘chestfeeding’ or trans women described as real women.

Neither did I want to work for an organisation – the BBC – so seduced by Stonewall that it asked us to put our pronouns on our emails. I didn’t want men with a penis, dressed in a frock and a wig, invading spaces reserved for women. I was determined that young teenage girls should not be encouraged to believe they had been born into the wrong body, to be given potentially dangerous, irreversible drugs and have their breasts cut off.

In 2017, I accepted a commission to write an opinion piece for The Sunday Times in which I insisted that while trans people should be treated with respect, they must also respect women and acknowledge that they were not the same as us. No matter how they dressed, they had no experience of what it meant to be a woman. They would never have a period, they could never become pregnant, their medical needs would never be the same as ours. They must not describe themselves as women but as trans women.

Friends had told me my career would be damaged by expressing my strongly held beliefs. I thought I didn’t care. The defence and protection of women and girls was at the centre of work I had done for most of my life. But my friends were right about the backlash.

First came transgender newsreader India Willoughby demanding that I should be sacked by the BBC. I wasn’t sacked, but was banned from discussing the debate on air. More tweets followed with India calling me a nasty cow and far worse. Then the threats from her acolytes began. ‘History has its eyes on you, those who dehumanise us might want to consider where they’re standing,’ wrote one.

Then came endless promises that I would be raped or murdered, leaving me genuinely worried for my safety.

So, again, why are the police on Team Trans Women and not on Team Women? Why does none of the above cause the police to question their choices?

Oh honestly. The levels of spite and petty malice here.

By an unhappy coincidence, the Polari Prize nonsense blew up the following day and, from my very first reply, my messages over the next 6 weeks were completely ignored, as were messages from my agent.

This morning, under threat of legal action, they finally deigned to respond, simply informing me that they were withdrawing the award.

How any organisation can say that my “insistence on empathy, justice, and authenticity is more vital than ever”, that I “confront uncomfortable truths with courage”, and that for “college students navigating questions of identity, belonging, and ethical responsibility, your work is not only moving, it is essential” and then rescind their prize when I demonstrate those very qualities is baffling.

Their cowardice is disappointing, but at least gives me another opportunity to be clear:

Awards are ultimately meaningless. The books matter. Readers matter. And if using one’s platform to defend the rights of women, children, lesbians and gay men means that some plaque doesn’t end up on my wall… well, I won’t be losing any sleep over it.

I’m staggered by the childish pettiness of not answering for all these weeks.

Trans ideology really is some kind of corrosive substance that eats the brain.

I’m seeing a lot of grief and anguish for Charlie Kirk on the left.

You know what I didn’t see? The same kind or amount of grief and anguish for Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark, not on the right and not even on the left.

Minnesota state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband were killed, and state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife were wounded in politically motivated shootings early Saturday, Gov. Tim Walz said. Authorities have also identified a suspect who is still at large.

Why the difference?

Now if only we could have done that.

Bolsonaro found guilty of plotting coup

Four out of the five Supreme Court justices tasked with judging the former leader found him guilty. One judge voted to acquit him.

The 70-year-old has been convicted of leading a conspiracy aimed at keeping him in power after he lost the 2022 election to his left-wing rival, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

While the plot failed to enlist enough support from the military to go ahead, it did culminate in the storming of government buildings by Bolsonaro’s supporters on 8 January 2023, the justices found.

Sound familiar at all?

The charges carry heavy sentences and could add up to a prison term of more than 40 years. The justices have begun with the sentencing.

Casting the decisive vote, Justice Cármen Lúcia said on Thursday that Bolsonaro had triggered the “insurgency” of 8 January 2023, when thousands of his supporters vandalised the Supreme Court, the presidential palace, and Congress.

She found him guilty on all the five charges: attempting to stage a coup, leading an armed criminal organisation, attempted violent abolition of the democratic rule of law, and two more charges related to the damage of property during the storming of buildings in Brasília on 8 January 2023.

Why couldn’t we do that? How did we manage to let him get away with it and then re-elect him?

Justice Lúcia compared the attempted coup to a “virus”, which, if left to fester, can kill the society in which it has taken hold in.

Can confirm.

Couldn’t happen to a nastier guy.

DC has shelved its Red Hood comic book series following writer Gretchen Felker-Martin sharing posts on Bluesky that joked about the shooting of Charlie Kirk, who was killed by an assassin’s bullet Wednesday.

“Hope the bullet’s okay after touching Charlie Kirk,” read one post. “Thoughts and prayers you Nazi bitch,” read another by Felker-Martin. The writer is trans, while Kirk was known for his anti-trans stance. Felker-Martin’s Bluesky account is now deactivated, but those posts were screenshotted and widely spread before DC canceled the series.

To refresh your memories of Felker-Martin’s novel that had JK Rowling sadistically murdered:

A horror novel by a transgender author that features the death of JK Rowling has been branded “vile, misogynistic drivel”.

Manhunt, by Gretchen Felker-Martin, follows two transgender women’s battle for survival in a post-apocalyptic world in which they face threats from murderous “terfs” (trans-exclusionary radical feminists) and a virus that turns people with a certain level of testosterone into zombies.

As well as naming Rowling, who has been accused of transphobia and received death threats over her stance on gender, the novel features a warship called the Galbraith, which appears tobe a reference to Robert Galbraith, the pseudonym Rowling uses for her Cormoran Strike novels. In Manhunt, Rowling reportedly dies in a fire in a Scottish castle.

Hur hur hur. Art for art’s sake, yeah?

H/t Mostly Cloudy

The San Francisco Chronicle points out:

The reaction of Second Amendment absolutists and their enablers to the slaying of conservative activist Charlie Kirk Wednesday during his rally at Utah Valley University was as predictable as it was dangerous.

In a moment that begged for calm and unity, Democrats — even those who loathed Kirk politically — offered condolences and railed against political violence. Meanwhile, Republicans, who control Congress and the White House (and, let’s face it, the Supreme Court) were much less likely to condemn political violence, and none suggested they should pursue gun safety measures…

Kirk himself was prone to inflame tensions in the wake of tragic violence. “Having an armed citizenry comes with a price,” he once told his followers days after a horrific mass shooting.

Yes, letting people freely shlep guns around does indeed come with a price, and quite a steep one.

Live by the sword…

What is the result of this having the Second Amendment?

It’s an exceptionally high level of gun deaths.

Nearly 47,000 people died of gun-related injuries in the United States in 2023, according to the latest available statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). While the number of gun deaths in the U.S. fell for the second consecutive year, it remained among the highest annual totals on record.

…

In 2023, the most recent year for which complete data is available, 46,728 people died from gun-related injuries, according to the CDC. That figure includes gun murders and gun suicides, along with three less common types of gun-related deaths the CDC tracks: those that involved law enforcement, those that were accidental, and those whose circumstances could not be determined.

…

How does the gun death rate in the U.S. compare with other countries?

The gun death rate in the U.S. is much higher than in most other nations, particularly developed nations.

Is it worth the cost?

Belief in magic gender is mandatory in The New Party.

Gender-critical MPs have “no place” in Jeremy Corbyn’s new hard-Left party, his co-founder has said.

Zarah Sultana, who was suspended by Labour last year and quit the party last month, said there was “no room” in the party for people who don’t have “pro-trans” values amid an escalating transgender row between party hopefuls.

What is “hard left” about believing in magic gender? It’s not hard left or soft left or any kind of left at all. It’s just dumb.

“Ms Sultana told the Pod Save the UK podcast on Tuesday: “If people don’t have pro-trans, pro-migrant, anti-racist values, there are plenty of other political spaces you can enter but not this one.”

Why? How is anti-racist connected to pro-trans ideology? I specify trans ideology because that’s the issue here. It’s not a matter of saying “we get to be mean to people who claim to be trans”; it’s matter of saying trans ideology is a bad new religion. There’s nothing lefty about it, unless you think worship of self-indulgent fantasies at the expense of reality is lefty. (To be fair, lots of lefties apparently do think exactly that.)

Sultana continues:

“Because we have to have our values, we have to let people know what we stand for. We have to defend the rights, life and dignity of everyone, and that means centring the most marginalised.”

Not necessarily. It doesn’t mean centering murderers or torturers or rapists. Some types of people are marginalized for good reasons.

“There is no room for socially conservative views in a Left-wing party, period.”

Ah but now explain how you define “socially conservative views”. Is it really socially conservative to be aware that men are not women? If it is, how can feminism exist at all? If everyone is a woman if he/she says so, then feminism becomes an empty category, because women can just identify into having more rights.

Originally a comment by maddog on A red line for the Greens.

Trans people have been massively targeted over the past few years, entirely wrongly, by a great number of people, and they just want to go and live their lives.

T have not been “massively targeted.” The entire T enterprise is a literally massive targeting of women, gay men, and lesbians, and of children that they can groom to their cause. T also ” massively target” anyone who supports women, gay men and lesbians, or who opposes the mutilation of children for a false ideology.

To the extent T have been “targeted,” it’s entirely rightly, because it’s simply false that men can be women or that women can be men.

They manifestly do not “just want to go and live their lives.” What a joke! No, they want to interfere in the lives of everyone, everywhere, at all times. If they simply wanted to live their lives, then they would cross-dress however felt comfortable to them, go to their jobs, shop for groceries, care for their children, do household chores and repairs, etc., and so on, and just live their same boring lives as they had before. They would recognize that they can’t change their sex, and the men would leave the women alone, not pushing their way into everything belonging to women. They don’t want to “just go and live their lives”; they want to run and control the lives of every single person in the world. They’re megalomaniacal in that way. “Just go and live their lives,” my foot. Do that, leave everyone else alone, and all the “targeting” would magically disappear.

It is a matter of basic human decency in some cases as well, and having that and having empathy for people who have been marginalised and targeted, who just want to exist in public spaces.

You’ve described the women’s position to a T (pun intended). Where is the human decency for women? Why do T and their supporters never have an ounce of empathy for women, children, G, and L? Why are they wholeheartedly committed to marginalizing, if not wholly erasing, women, lesbians, gay men, and anyone who knows that sex is real? Why are they trying to obliterate women, L, and G from all public spaces? Every protestation is an admission of what they themselves are doing. The gaslighting is strong in this one.

Is this the new Reichstag fire? I think we can be pretty sure it won’t go well for Team Not Crazy.

Though no motive has been disclosed, the circumstances of the shooting fueled concerns that it was part of a spike of political violence that has cut across the political spectrum.

Well of course it is; what else would it be? Violent and political but not part of the spike in political violence? How would that work? I do wish journalism could skip the meaningless banalities.

Kirk was a regular presence on cable TV, where he leaned into the culture wars and heaped praise on the then-president. Trump and his son were equally effusive and often spoke at Turning Point conferences.

Bad moon rising.

Putin is like that kid who keeps slapping or pinching or tripping smaller kids because he wants an easy fight.

NATO chief Mark Rutte has denounced Russia’s “reckless behaviour” after drones violated Polish airspace, and said the alliance’s response [was] “very successful.”

“A full assessment is ongoing. But of course, whether it was intentional or not, it is absolutely reckless, it is absolutely dangerous,” Rutte said after talks among NATO members.

He said his message to Russian President Vladimir Putin was clear: “Stop violating allied airspace, and know that we stand ready, that we are vigilant, and that we will defend every inch of NATO territory.”

Putin rolls his eyes.

Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said that Poland has no doubt that the drones that flew into its territory were not an accident. He was commenting on Russian drones that entered its airspace overnight during the Russian attack in western Ukraine.

“We have no doubt that this was not an accidental event… We are dealing with an unprecedented case of an attack not only on Poland’s territory but also on the territory of NATO and the European Union,” Sikorski told reporters.

Sikorski added that the mass use of drones threatens all of NATO and that Prime Minister Donald Tusk has asked NATO allies to provide Poland with stronger air defense.

Fortunately we have a very level-headed guy in charge of our armed forces.

The fix is in.

The feminist group that secured the landmark Supreme Court ruling asserting that sex is binary has raised fears that a “Nicola Sturgeon crony” has been put in charge of implementing it in Scotland.

Minutes of a Scottish government working group set up to consider revisions to allegedly unlawful gender self-ID policies in place across the public sector reveal it was initially led by Louise Macdonald, director-general for communities.

Macdonald, then working in the charity sector, was hand-picked by Sturgeon to co-chair the then first minister’s independent taskforce on women and girls before joining the government in 2022 as director-general for the economy.

Fox guarding henhouse much?

Macdonald displays “she/her’ pronouns on her online CV and has previously posted online in support of Transgender Day of Remembrance, an event some gender critical activists claim is designed to spread unevidenced claims that trans people face heightened risk of murder.

Gee ya think??? Are you sure it’s only some gender criticals? I’d bet on most or all. It’s so trans ideology typical: maudlin claims of fragility and vulnerability as men help themselves to everything women have struggled for over the past half-century. If only we could have 365 days of trans forgettance.

John Swinney, the first minister, has said the group chaired by Macdonald is taking forward detailed work on how to implement the Supreme Court ruling, which found that for the purposes of UK equalities law sex is based on biology.

However, he has faced repeated accusations of deliberate delays in implementing the ruling, with For Women Scotland pushing ahead with a third legal case, after two earlier victories over SNP ministers in court, designed to quash self-ID policies in schools and prisons.

No no no it’s not that the delays are deliberate, it’s just that his shoelaces keep breaking.

The group formally lodged legal papers at the Court of Session on Monday, after ministers failed to meet a deadline to withdraw the schools and prisons guidance.

They tried to meet it! Really they did! It was those damn shoelaces!!

Marion Calder, a For Women Scotland director, said: “How can women have confidence in the Scottish government to implement the law, when a first minister who doesn’t even know what a woman is cherry-picked this person to lead a women and girls taskforce?

“It comes as no surprise that the Scottish government is refusing to follow the law when a Nicola Sturgeon crony was apparently tasked with leading its response.

“That she displays pronouns in her biography and has endorsed transactivist propaganda only goes to show that, even now, no lessons have been learnt.”

Calder added: “Formal papers have now been lodged at the Court of Session and if the SNP will not do the right thing voluntarily, we have no option but to force them to through the courts.”

…

The working group set up by the Scottish government was instrumental in drawing up its response to an EHRC consultation.

It called for an “inclusive approach” to be taken to both “biological women and trans women” in granting access to single-sex services, such as domestic abuse centres or homelessness services, leading to new accusations that it was trying to get around the law.

Sigh. You can’t take that kind of “inclusive approach” and still be doing the thing you’re supposed to be doing. If you take that kind of “inclusive approach” to domestic abuse centres or homelessness services then you’re not providing women with safe domestic abuse centres or homelessness services. What you are doing is coddling your own vanity at the expense of extremely vulnerable women. I sincerely hope you can’t sleep at night.

Trade unions vow to continue trashing women.

Trade unions have vowed to oppose the Supreme Court ruling on transgender issues and have called official guidance on single-sex spaces “flawed”.

Delegates at the Trades Union Congress (TUC) voted unanimously in favour of a motion which said the April ruling went against the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).

…

The unions’ motion added that since the Supreme Court ruling “there has been a surge of transphobic hate promoted by the far-Right for political advantage”.

Jenny Black, a transgender woman from Unison, told delegates: “This is not the preserve of the far-Right. It’s the Left as well, and it’s the Labour Government as well. They’re using this as a political football and it’s trans people they are kicking around.”

Is it? I wonder if Mr Black has noticed the way women have been kicked around for the last ten years or so.

Ms Black spoke of how her employer, a local authority, had considered creating new “trans-only toilets”, adding: “That’s segregation. Segregation in Britain in 2025.”

Oh shut up. It’s the familiar old necessary “segregation” of men away from women in some circumstances. We’re meant to understand that as being like racial segregation, but it isn’t. Obviously.

Julia Georgiou, a member of the TUC LGBT+ committee, accused the Government and in particular Ms Phillipson, of being prepared to “sacrifice trans people”. The remarks came just hours after Ms Phillipson gave an address to the TUC.

The Labour deputy leadership front-runner is likely to continue facing criticism from the Left and figures in the trade union movement over her stance on gender issues throughout the contest. During her speech, a handful of protesters silently held up pride flags and signs that read: “Protect trans lives. Reject the EHRC ‘guidance’”.

Right because trans people’s lives are in danger if men are not allowed to invade all of women’s spaces and take all of women’s prizes. Protect trans lives by letting trans people do whatever they want all the time.

Sorry, it’s policy.

Metropolitan Police Commissioner Mark Rowley had a bruising encounter with the BBC’s Emma Barnett on the Today Programme this morning over the arrest of comedian Graham Linehan. Rowley refused to say the arrest was a mistake, instead blaming “national policies” and Home Office rules. Rowley said he wouldn’t “pore over one case”.

How interesting. This “one case” is a matter of grotesque police overreaction and bullying, and the Comish sneers that he’s not going to bother paying attention to it. Bro it’s your job to pay attention to it. It’s also probably your job to say something less stupid in response to questions.

Barnett went on to ask whether the officers were “scared” not to arrest Linehan, to which Rowley said:

“I don’t think scared is the right word… officers are making judgments in thousands of cases. The national guidance is very clear about following through on what the victim alleges, taking that at face value.”

Really? Really? So every time a victim alleges that someone said something unkind on TwitX the police will send five armed cops to arrest that someone as publicly as possible?

I don’t believe that for one single second. To start with we know it doesn’t apply to women. The police don’t stir when a woman says a man raped her, so why would they stir when a woman says a man said something unkind to her? But we know it doesn’t apply to men either. It doesn’t apply at all; it’s complete fantasy. There aren’t enough cops on the planet to do that, let alone in the UK, let alone in London.

No. Come on. This was no boating accident.

The Scottish Greens are deranged.

The newly elected co-leaders of the Scottish Greens have said anyone who does not accept that trans women are women has no place in their party.

Ross Greer and Gillian Mackay, who were chosen last month to succeed Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater, used an interview on the BBC’s Scotcast to make clear that backing trans rights is a “red line” for the Greens. Anyone who does not accept that men are women has no place in their party.

That’s going to be a very tiny itty bitty barely visible party then.

Asked if someone who was committed to the climate cause but did not believe trans women were women would have a home in the Greens, Ms Mackay said: “I think that is probably a red line for us. Trans people have been massively targeted over the past few years, entirely wrongly, by a great number of people, and they just want to go and live their lives.”

No they haven’t been “targeted”. They’ve been told they’re wrong, and that’s because they are. Men are not women, and men who claim to be women are not being “targeted” or persecuted or anything else along those lines when they are told they’re not.

“It is a matter of basic human decency in some cases as well, and having that and having empathy for people who have been marginalised and targeted, who just want to exist in public spaces. That is becoming more and more difficult for a great many of them.”

Blah blah blah. What about women, you damn fool? What about women who want to exist in public spaces without finding leering giggling bullying men taking their jobs and prizes?

Asked about the Supreme Court ruling that the terms sex and women in the Equality Act mean biology rather than gender identity, Mr Greer said the law could be changed.

“The Supreme Court’s job is not to make up law. The Supreme Court’s job is to interpret the law as it has been written. We would argue that the Equality Act clearly does need to be changed to clarify the rights of trans people, and in this case in particular, trans women.”

Attaboy. Take a flame-thrower to women’s rights.

Green shmeen.

The BBC simply lies in this bit of chat about Glinner.

Father Ted co-creator Graham Linehan has told BBC News he stands by his posts on X which led to his arrest last week, over his views on challenging “a trans-identified male” in “a female-only space”.

Scare quotes scare quotes. The BBC doesn’t put scare quotes on female pronouns for men who pretend to be women but it does put them on truthful labels.

Recalling his flight, which landed in the UK on 1 September, he said he “realised something was up” when no one on the plane was allowed to stand up.

“I didn’t expect it to be what it turned out to be. And then they called my name out and I think I immediately knew what was going to happen,” he said.

Jeezus, I didn’t know about the everyone remain seated bit. That’s disgusting. You’d think he was a serial killer. FIVE COPS, and all passengers required to remain seated after a long tedious flight, because a man publicly disagrees that men can be women. WHY? Have the police even explained yet why they found it necessary to send five cops for such a trivial abstract non-violent matter?

When asked if the tone he took in his posts could be described as “vicious and personal to trans people” and if he had tried to “lower the temperature a bit” in what he writes, he said: “I’ve tried several times, but you always get met by a slap in the face.”

Oh shut up, Beeb. Have you ever asked a “trans woman” about vicious personal things he said to women? Ever ever ever even once?

The first post, from his X feed, said: “If a trans-identified male is in a female-only space, he is committing a violent, abusive act. Make a scene, call the cops and if all else fails, punch him in the balls.”

It was put to him that what he wrote was insulting and violent, and he agreed, but said: “Women have a right to defend themselves from strange men in their spaces.”

Oh shut up, Beeb. Men invading women’s spaces is insulting and violent. Go talk to them for a change.

On 3 September the head of the Metropolitan Police, Sir Mark Rowley, defended the officers involved, but said he recognised “concern caused by such incidents given differing perspectives on the balance between free speech and the risks of inciting violence in the real world”.

Give me a break. How often do planeloads of people have to stay in their seats after a transatlantic flight while five cops arrest a man for inciting violence against women in the real world? Is the number more than zero? I put it to you that that has never ever happened.

Green Party leader Zack Polanski called the posts “totally unacceptable”, saying the arrest seemed “proportionate”, while Shami Chakrabarti, a Labour peer and ex-director of Liberty, a civil liberties group, said “the public order statute book and speech offences in particular do need an overarching review”.

“But inciting violence must always be a criminal offence,” she added.

God what a pack of shits.

Trump says male violence against women is trivial.

President Donald Trump seemingly diminished domestic violence while discussing the crime rate in Washington, D.C.

There’s no “seemingly” about it; it’s what he said.

During a speech at the Museum of the Bible, the president boasted about violent crime levels decreasing in Washington, D.C. since he deployed the National Guard to the nation’s capital. The only remaining crimes, he said, were incidents of domestic violence — “little fights” within the home that, in Trump’s words, are preventing his perfect crime improvement data.

“There’s no crime. They said crime’s down 87 percent,” Trump said. “They said, ‘No, no, no, it’s more than 87 percent. Virtually nothing.'”

Who are these “they”s who say one thing and then say the opposite?

“And much lesser things — things that take place in the home, they call ‘crime,’ ” the president continued. “They’ll do anything they can to find something. If a man has a little fight with the wife, they say, ‘This was a crime.’ So now I can’t claim 100 percent.”

I see. A man hits “the wife” just a few times and that’s not a crime at all, it’s simple justice. People mention it only to mess with Trump. It’s so unfair.

This isn’t the first time the Trump administration has downplayed the severity of domestic violence and its perpetrators.

Most recently, Attorney General Pam Bondi restored actor Mel Gibson’s gun rights after losing [he lost] them in a 2011 conviction. Gibson, a vocal Trump supporter and one of the president’s new “special ambassadors” to Hollywood, was found guilty of misdemeanor domestic violence regarding an incident with his then-girlfriend and their child one year earlier.

The restoration of Gibson’s gun rights was a controversial decision in the months leading up to it. Department of Justice pardon attorney Elizabeth G. Oyer was reportedly asked to recommend Gibson’s gun rights be restored, though she told The New York Times she didn’t feel comfortable doing so.

Shortly after she declined to do so, she was fired. The Trump administration denied any link between Oyer’s resistance and her termination.

“There are real consequences that flow from people who have a history of domestic violence being in possession of firearms,” Oyer said, per the Times. “This isn’t political — this is a safety issue.”

Yes but it’s the safety of women, so it doesn’t matter.

Oh dear oh dear – if only Laurie Penny had said this to Piers Morgan when he asked her what she meant by claiming to be “non-binary”.

Lazy reporter is excited to find a way to talk smack about JK Rowling in an article about funding the Vancouver Parks department.

It’s a story bringing together two very different things that nonetheless regularly attract controversy: the Vancouver Park Board and the Harry Potter universe. 

Those are two very different things all right, but are they really being brought together? Or is the reporter just saying they are, because (yawn) funding parks doesn’t draw as much attention as the tantrums of livid they/thems do?

“J.K. Rowling’s actions against the trans community are so egregious that I think we need to look at changing our minds on this,” said Vancouver city Coun. Lucy Maloney.

On Monday, she along with fellow opposition Coun. Sean Orr, called for the park board to reconsider the Harry Potter Forbidden Forest Experience — a temporary immersive attraction that will open in Stanley Park in November. 

Ooh how exciting! Egregious! Cage fight! You bring the beer, I’ll drink it.

The attraction was announced last week, and tickets starting at $49.50 for adults will go on sale on Wednesday.

Because of Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling’s long history of funding and advocating for one side of the debate over transgender rights and issues, much of the online conversation around the event quickly pivoted to whether the city’s elected park board should have approved the event. 

What “debate” is that then, clumsy journalist? You mean the debate over whether or not a bulky irritable occasionally violent man should be welcome in women’s toilets? You really think that’s a debate as opposed to a systematic dismantling of women’s rights?

“It’s really hard to separate the artist from the art,” said Ky Sargeant, the QMUNITY vice-chair for a large queer, trans and two-spirit resource centre in Vancouver. 

Yeah and it’s really hard to separate the putz from the censorious blather.

However, multiple commissioners said if the vote happened today, the conversation might have gone differently.

“I regret not knowing more,” said commissioner Scott Jensen, who said the vote predated his knowledge that Rowling had funded legal cases challenging the definition of gender in Scotland.

You mean the “definition of gender” that allowed violent men to be housed in women’s prisons? That “definition of gender”?

Hey I wonder if we decided to redefine “cliff” it would become safe to step off one.

But Jensen said many students he teaches are big Harry Potter fans, and hoped they could enjoy the attraction separate from Rowling’s views, which he said he opposed. 

Well of course he said he opposed, because he’s not allowed to say he doesn’t oppose.

H/t ibbica