Wait what? The Guardian has a category called Living in a woman’s body? How is that possible? Isn’t it totally…………………..transphobic?

At any rate, the current entry is Living in a woman’s body: hospitality workers have always suffered abuse. In the pandemic, it got worse. It’s written by Saru Jayaraman, whose lived experience may have left her somewhat less impressed by Gender Mythology than your average Owen and Jolyon and Adrian.

After working as a bartender in Washington DC for many years, Ifeoma Ezumaki’s body reached its limit during the pandemic. For Ezumaki and millions of other restaurant employees, working during the pandemic – often, in the US, for a “sub-minimum” wage – became a source of immeasurable suffering. Tips went down because sales went down, while customer harassment and hostility went up. Ezumaki and her colleagues had to become public health marshals, in addition to cocktail servers; she was asked to enforce social distancing, mask wearing and even vaccination requirements.

A customer at the bar “asked” her to pull her mask down so that he could inspect her face, and when she declined, told her she wouldn’t be eating that night.

The comment exemplified the power that some male customers, managers and even colleagues feel they have over women’s bodies in the restaurant industry. While Ezumaki and her colleagues wished to protect their bodies and the bodies of their families by wearing a mask, many male customers made it clear that they believed they had the right to control female waiters’ bodies, particularly when the waiters were dependent on tips. Many have reported male customers asking them to take off their masks so that they can judge their looks – and tip on that basis.

And, as the emphasis on bodies underlines, this is a form of harassment and domination particular to women. The kind of man who bullies women like that is not looking for trans women’s bodies. Men aren’t as easy to bully, because of male puberty.

Vote it down.

WDI asks Green Party to uphold members’ rights to freedom of thought and expression.

11 February 2022

Women’s Declaration International has been made aware that Ani Stafford-Townsend, co-chair of Green Party Women in England and Wales, has sent a ‘late motion’ to the Green Party Conference. This motion proposes to expel all Green Party members who have signed the Declaration on Women’s Sex-Based Rights. This has come in the same week that WDI signatory Emma Bateman, democratically elected co-chair of the women’s committee was suspended from the Green Party, and Dr Shahrar Ali, spokesperson on policing and domestic violence who holds ‘gender critical’ views, was removed from his position.

Leftish politics energetically dynamiting the bridge it’s standing on.

Can the Green Party really afford to get rid of everyone who doesn’t think men can turn into women?

Although Ani Stafford-Townsend’s motion claims to recognise the need for open discussion, it is aimed at closing down debate and either removing people with opposing views from the Green Party entirely or re-educating them into the ‘correct’ way of thinking. It misrepresents WDI and the Declaration, making a range of unfounded claims and associations that are presented entirely without evidence.

The re-education part is especially galling in light of the fact that the “correct” way of thinking is not correct.

Believing that women have rights based on their sex that are vital to achieving equality is not a ‘hard-line’ or ‘extremist’ position, especially as these rights are being systematically dismantled all over the world. Articles 4 and 5 of our Declaration reaffirm women’s rights to freedom of opinion, expression and assembly. Actions such as this motion make it clear that these rights are needed more than ever before.

And that an astonishing number of people who consider themselves “correct” and progressive are downright eager to punish and exclude women for defending women’s rights.

Back in December 2018 I did a post about Julia Beck, who was pushed out of Baltimore LGBTQ Commission’s Law and Policy Committee at the instigation of a trans-identified man. This man:

Ava Pipitone, a male trans activist who dates women and identifies as a “female,” “lesbian,” and “transbutch.”

Well guess what.

A male who identified as a lesbian and had the sole lesbian representative removed from Baltimore’s LGBTQ Commission while pushing lesbophobic sentiment in 2018 has quietly detransitioned.

Kodah Pipitone, once known as Ava, was instrumental in having lesbian advocate Julia Beck kicked off the commission and shunned as a “TERF”, then sponsored an event in which he advertised that “exclusionary” lesbians would be “hung [sic] by their necks.”

…

In 2018, then going by the name ‘Ava’, Pipitone was both president of Baltimore’s Transgender Alliance and an advocate for the global pimp lobby, the Sex Workers Outreach Project. In order to make the LGBTQ Commission as “inclusive” as possible, Pipitone was invited to their meetings by Mayor Pugh.

At a Pride parade in June of 2018, Beck marched with signs that read, “Dykes Don’t Like Dick”, “Lesbian NOT Queer,” and “Violence Against Lesbians is an Epidemic,” among other slogans. According to Beck in a piece she wrote for AfterEllenon her experience, “Bystanders cheered, clapped, and took pictures with us. Some whispered thanks while others shouted, ‘Go home TERFs!’ Twitter blew up trying to find the notorious dykes who crashed Baltimore Pride. I was doxxed and multiple friends, including one woman who was not a part of the protest, received threats.”

Beck’s statements at Pride prompted criticism from her entirely male colleagues on the Commission. During a meeting which took place that month, Pipitone asked Beck point-blank to identify his sex. She responded, “You’re male,” to which Pipitone replied by accusing Beck of violence. Over the course of the next few months, Pipitone actively campaigned to have Beck removed from her position.

But that was then. It’s not 2018 any more.

But Instagram posts by Pipitone show that he no longer identifies as a lesbian woman, having quietly detransitioned. Instead, he now advertises himself as a techno-futurist, tagging his selfies “biohacker” and advertises his desire to “reverse engineer age.”

Julia Beck slammed Pipitone in a recent Facebook post after having discovered he’s dropped his ruse, claiming that he’d “traded one cult for another.”

Having been a victim of Pipitone’s temporary venture into her identity, Beck said, “It’s fine to find yourself in life. If only the process for men like him didn’t involve traumatizing women or pretending to be one.”

And it doesn’t sound as if he’s bothered to apologize to her.

I don’t know the source of the poster but it’s excellent.

I didn’t know six-year-olds could be terfs.

Officials at a primary school warned the parents of a six-year-old that he would be deemed “transphobic” if he expressed confusion when a pupil he knew as a boy was wearing a dress.

In all fairness, it would be nice if boys could wear dresses if they want to, without confusing other boys. But maybe that’s a silly thing to say – there are always going to be social rules children have to learn, and children are always going to be confused or annoyed by other children who break the social rules. There can’t be zero social rules, so there have to be some social rules, so children have to learn them.

Anyway, some boys will want to experiment with wearing skirts, and it would be nice if that could be calmly accepted without any panic about is he trans or is his little friend transphobic.

Sally and Nigel Rowe have released a letter they received from a Church of England school on the Isle of Wight after they had raised concerns that their son was confused by the behaviour of another pupil.

The letter from the school’s head teacher and the chairwoman of the governors warned that pupils would be viewed as transphobic if they demonstrated an “inability to believe a transgender person is actually a ‘real’ female or male”.

Is this part of Anglican teachings now? Do we think one of the disciples liked to wear high heels suspendies and a bra?

Children would also be regarded as transphobic if they exhibited “feelings of discomfort and inability to trust or connect with someone based on their transgender status” as well as a refusal to use an “adopted name or using gender inappropriate pronouns”, the letter stated.

So six-year-olds, who are still learning the basic rules of everything, now have to take on board that some of the rules turn out to be NO NOT THAT WAY, except when they’re not, so it’s necessary to learn both the rules and their opposites, and betray zero emotion about any of it, apart from big hugs for all the little trans and non-binary playmates.

And what does any of this have to do with any church? I think churches and mosques and temples should stay out of education, but I also think they should stay out of stupid new sex-denying cults.

There’s a move to purge feminist women from the Green Party.

Sign the Women’s Declaration International declaration on sex-based rights for women and you may run the risk of being thrown out of the Green Party.

Green Feminists who are also members of the Green Party of England and Wales need to be aware of the late motion being brought by Ani Stafford-Townsend co-chair of the Green Party Women committee which is given below:

Late Motion: Developing an intersectional approach to diversity in the Green Party

Synopsis:

GPEW accepts the damning results of the 25th January 2022 Council of Europe report “Combating rising hate against LGBTI people in Europe”. GPEW accepts that it has been subject to hard-line anti-trans activism for some time; issues cannot be tackled without understanding; and oppression of marginalised groups intersect.

Not including women though. Women aren’t marginalised.

They want a motion inserted into the record of policy statements.

The Green Party recognises the need for civil, open dialogue between party members on the topic of Trans Rights, in order to enable the party to make the most informed policy decisions possible.

And by “open” we mean “not including those bitches.”

The Green Party accepts that the “Gender Critical” movements in most UK political parties have been infiltrated by hard-line extremists, who advocate for the wholesale removal of virtually all trans rights as currently enshrined in the Equality Act 2010, and routinely share platforms with those who advocate for extremist positions such as the mass sterilization of trans people. These extremists have also been linked with attacks on women’s abortion rights, misinformation designed to provoke hatred towards trans people, and have benefitted from funding from the far-right.

Emphasis added. Have you ever seen anyone advocating that? I sure as hell haven’t.

The Green Party condemns hard-line anti-trans activists, including signatories of the “Women’s Declaration International”, which calls for the following:

A total ban on all trans women from entering any and all women’s spaces, including toilets, changing rooms, etc.

A ban on all internationally recommended trans healthcare of any kind on under 18s.

A ban on organisations that recognise Gender Identity (including policy that merely accepts the use of preferred pronouns) from having any involvement in children’s healthcare.

Legally protect the right to misgender trans women.

No, legally protect the right to call men “men.” Note also the failure to spell out what “trans healthcare” is. No feminists are advocating for trans people to be denied health care; the issue is drastic irreversible amputations or delays of puberty and the like. Items like that aren’t “health care” as commonly understood, and in the absence of the word “trans” would be seen as crimes against human rights.

Ban trans women from being legally recognised as mothers, and trans men form being legally recognised as fathers.

Ban scientific research into fertility treatment for trans women.

Ban all trans women from misogyny combating measures, such as all women shortlists, scholarships, etc.

That’s right. We want all-women shortlists and scholarships etc to be for women. It’s simple, and it’s not evil.

Ban all trans women and girls from women’s sports at all levels of competition, irrespective of the wishes of the organising sporting bodies.

Ban all trans women from women’s prisons.

Require all collected statistics to refer to trans women as male, and trans men as female.

Legally protect parents who seek to deny healthcare or therapy to transgender children.

There it is again. It’s not “healthcare.” I don’t think any feminist women want to deny therapy to trans children. We do think it should be competent though.

Conference instructs GPRC to suspend signatories of the WHRC/Women’s Declaration International.

Conference instructs GPEx to provide intersectional equalities & diversity training to elected members, internally & externally, and to local party officers, in order to gain a comprehensive understanding of how the challenges to the rights of all marginalised groups intersect.

Insert into the Code of Conduct:

10.11:

Members should under no circumstances sign or have signed public declarations calling for the explicit removal of LGBTQIA+ rights, as enshrined in the Equality Act 2010 (under “gender Identity” and “sexual orientation”), in particular the WHRC declaration/Women’s Declaration International. Those members who do or have done so should be suspended from the party permanently.

Purge the witches.

An editorial by swimming champion Nancy Hogshead-Makar:

As an Olympic champion and as a civil rights lawyer, I can assure you that there is nothing fair about transgender woman Lia Thomas competing for the University of Pennsylvania in NCAA swimming.

…

I swam on the U.S. National Team for nine years, from 1976–1984, the same years that East German swimmers dominated women’s competitions by cheating with anabolic steroids.

I was able to win three Olympic gold medals and a silver medal because the East Germans boycotted the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games.

We all knew they were cheating. The boycott announcement was a relief; I knew I’d have a fair shot at winning.

And she did win, and the Olympic gold medals changed her life.

Title IX, the federal law that prohibits sex discrimination, permits sex-segregation in sport – which means that, for the most part, men compete against men, and women compete against women.

Title IX gave me a fair opportunity to win and set records, as well as access to money, accolades, and leadership opportunities.

If Congress and courts had forbidden sex-segregated sports, the way race and religious segregation is prohibited, I would have qualified for my high school team, but I’d never have been the Hall of Famer that I became.

Because women are smaller than men, the way domestic cats are smaller than tigers. They’re not inferior, they’re smaller. That’s why sex segregation in sport is both fair and necessary.

As a civil rights lawyer, I run Champion Women, a non-profit that provides legal advocacy for girls and women in sports. We produce data — for athletes, families, alumni and donors – which demonstrates just how badly 90% of colleges and universities are discriminating against women.

In total, women are denied over 183,000 opportunities to play collegiate sports, they’re denied over a billion dollars in athletic scholarships, and hundreds and millions of dollars in treatment, meaning women aren’t being given equal facilities, locker rooms, medical care, publicity, travel, and so forth.

I’ve never met a single female athlete that couldn’t list the ways they’re getting second-class treatment as compared to their male football or basketball players.

In those 38 years, I’ve never heard a single man say, ‘Oh you women face such overwhelming sex discrimination throughout society, particularly in sexual harassment and violence. Here, take our athletic facilities and scholarships.’

Quite the opposite.

The unwritten rule is that women’s sports can exist, so long as not a single male is harmed by women’s inclusion.

But when it’s a whole bunch of women pfffffffffffff who cares.

And yet, notice that women are expected to graciously move over and let trans athlete-inclusion change the meaning of the ‘women’s sports’ category.

Expected to and bullied to and forced to. Thomas’s team-mates are being forced to by their university. It’s disgusting.

It is sexist; we’d never allow the meaning of NCAA ‘men’s sports’ category to change so that current NFL and NBA teams could be included.

We’d never allow 25-year-old men to compete in boy’s high school events. And we would never tell those boys to just ‘work harder’ if they wanted to win.

Unfair, isn’t it.

There’s a bit of a glitch though. Amnesty US said it four days before Moyet did, and I don’t see any pile-on.

Very odd. I guess maybe organizations are allowed to say it, but women are not? I guess women are not allowed to say we have human rights because that doesn’t center people who aren’t women?

Apparently it’s now verboten to say woman’s rights are human rights.

Who was the target of the ugly and abusive pile-on? I gather it was Alison Moyet, who deleted the verboten tweet.

The struggle continues.

Ho yus, the Vikings were very up to date on their gender identity beliefs as any fule kno.

Transgender warriors were among the Vikings who ransacked Scotland more than 1,000 years ago, a leading historian believes.

Definitely. There were lots of trans women among the ransackers, staying in camp to make soup and knit woolly hats.

Sacha Coward, who specialises in gender and sexuality, said it would be “a mistake” to believe that Viking society subscribed to traditional gender roles, after recent discoveries suggested that some celebrated warriors were female.

“The stories you hear are of fierce hotblooded warrior men, of violence and pillage,” said Coward. “This notion can make it hard for us to look at the 8th to 11th centuries in Scotland without a strong cisgender and heterosexual bias. It can be a challenge to see the roles of gender non-conforming people, to pull apart the understanding of gender, sex and identity as they really were for the people who we now call Vikings.”

What’s a strong cisgender bias? Is it a “bias” to be aware that humans, like all primates, are sexually dimorphic?

“At the very least, men and women in Viking society could break from traditional constructs of male and female roles and it is possible that we are talking about people who would today identify as transgender or nonbinary.”

Ohhh that’s how he got there. How very stupid. There appear to have been women warriors, therefore Vikings didn’t have rules barring women from fighting…therefore the women warriors were “transgender.” By all means translate different customs among people 12 centuries ago into the idiotic jargon of contemporary pretend-activists. Please, draw up the Viking gingerbread person without delay.

“We know that the gender identity of a person in the Norse period was often tied to their role in Viking society, not just the biology they were born with,” said Coward. “Queer theory is an important part of archaeology and can help us understand the complexity and diversity of past societies.”

Having different rules about what the two sexes are allowed to do does not rely on anything called “queer theory.” How the rules did and didn’t vary is a fascinating subject, but the word “queer” doesn’t need to be ritually invoked to make sense of it.

Also, who says Sacha Coward is a “leading” historian? Not anything I can find via Google, that’s for sure. He calls himself a freelance museum professional, which doesn’t sound like leading historian at all.

What do words mean – it’s such a puzzle. We have to start anew every morning, figuring out their meanings for ourselves.

The first tweet in the series says they include men in their for women feminism. It’s so important to make clear and underline that their feminism is for men that they say that before they say anything else. The way they say it has a bullying note, too – it’s clearly stated that by “women” they mean anyone who says “Yep I’m a woman,” so don’t you go pretending you didn’t realize, Karen. In short it’s pre-emptively hostile, which wouldn’t make me want to join them if I were in Scotland.

Anyway, they’re telling the truth – it is right there in their constitution.

D. Membership

Membership is open to all self-identified women who agree with the aims of the Association.

Imagine an organization for workers. membership in which is open to all self-identified workers. Imagine such an organization filling up with rich bosses who swiftly outnumber the workers and prevent the organization from doing anything in solidarity with workers. Imagine the same switcheroo with LGB people, or immigrants, or people of color, or atheists, or people with disabilities. Imagine all political organizing being sabotaged by this “all who identify as” nonsense – it wouldn’t take long at all.

It’s a brilliant wheeze; it’s just too bad the suckers haven’t seen the trick yet.

So anyway, at least it’s an excellent way to wring money out of people.

Last month Trump got dressed up and went to a party in Naples, Florida.

There, a long red carpet marked the pathway into a Christmas-decorated hangar filled with supporters of Mr. Trump who had paid $10,000 to $30,000 for the privilege of attending a party and taking a photo with him.

…

But the money raised did not go to Mr. Trump’s political operation. Instead, Mr. Trump’s share of the evening’s proceeds went straight into his pocket, according to a person familiar with the arrangement.

Well, yeah. If you know there are people willing to pay 30 grand to take a photo with you, what are you supposed to do, just throw away that whole opportunity? Get real.

Multiple attendees said they bought their tickets from a private company, Whip Fundraising, whose founder, Brad Keltner, has asserted that “the lion’s share” went to charity. But the website advertising the event listed no charitable cause. And Mr. Keltner, reached by phone, declined to discuss how money was distributed.

Charitable cause charitable shmause. Never mind that, the money WENT TO CHARITY. You know, those big buckets on every street corner labeled CHARITY. This Keltner guy drove from corner to corner dropping it in himself personally. Charity was very happy about the whole thing.

In the year since Mr. Trump has left the White House, he has undertaken a wide-ranging set of moneymaking ventures, trading repeatedly on his political fame and fan base in pursuit of profit.

What else is he going to do? Read?

He has gone on an arena tour with the former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly, where a backstage “V.I.P. package” sold for more than $7,500. He has published a $75 coffee-table book, after being paid a multimillion-dollar advance by a new publishing company co-founded by his eldest son. He has turned an online Trump store into a MAGA merchandiser, with his company sending marketing missives to people on his 2020 campaign’s email list.

That store is now selling red “Make America Great Again” hats for $50 each — a $20 markup from the price currently offered by his political action committee — with all proceeds going to a Trump-owned company.

It’s all so dignified, isn’t it?

His wife, Melania, has gotten into the act, too, auctioning off online collectibles and scheduling her own big-ticket event in Naples this April, a “tulips and topiaries high tea,” with V.I.P. packages reaching $50,000 and an undisclosed portion going to charity.

.001%?

Other past presidents have cashed in financially after leaving the White House. Barack and Michelle Obama reportedly sold a joint book deal for $65 million. Bill and Hillary Clinton’s speechmaking after leaving the White House was estimated to have netted them $153 million by the spring of 2015, when Mrs. Clinton announced her own run for president. George W. Bush has been a mainstay on the speaking circuit, too.

The Obamas wrote the books though. Trump is just selling is divine presence.

Mrs. Trump is now selling tickets to the April “high tea,” with organizers saying that some of the profits will benefit an initiative of her “Be Best” endeavor called “Fostering the Future,” meant to provide computer-science scholarships to young people who have been in foster care.

There was no indication of how much of the proceeds Mrs. Trump herself intended to pocket. Florida requires any organization that raises charitable contributions in the state to register. No charity with the name “Fostering the Future” or “Be Best” is registered in Florida.

Asked about the solicitation, officials at the Florida agency that oversees charitable fund-raising said they also could not find evidence of the required state registration and had opened an inquiry as a result.

“Consumer Services Division is currently investigating whether this event involves an entity operating in violation of Chapter 496, Florida Statutes,” Erin M. Moffet, an agency spokeswoman, said in a statement, referring to the state law requiring charities to register before soliciting money.

Ok ok ok so there’s no such charity but she’ll set one up just as soon as she gets the time.

Remember that time Trump stole money from a cancer charity? Had to pay it back and pay a fine? But this time will be different, for sure.

Trevor Phillips on Stonewall’s attacks on the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, starting with wondering what has happened to what used to be the gay rights movement.

Today, that gay rights movement seems a shadow of itself, preoccupied by the intricacies of a language despotism that has emerged from the faculty lounges of minor North American universities. The latest step, a call for the UN to revoke the status of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, of which I was the founding chair, is baffling. Who could have imagined that LGBTQ+ campaigners would so contort themselves that they are petitioning a body which is advised on human rights by countries that stone women and imprison gay men?

As we know, it’s about gender recognition and access to women’s spaces.

When we created the EHRC we insisted on its independence, not just from government but from sectional interests and powerful lobby groups too. I know that this infuriated some racial and religious groups, who never stopped trying to get me sacked. The problem is that for these sectional interests, independence meant doing what they wanted. They regarded any consideration of the needs of others as a betrayal of their right to shape the world exactly to their desires, and anyone who did not do their bidding as a ‘phobe’.

That’s trans activism right there – it’s peculiarly bad at considering the needs of others. Since in this instance “others” are about 99% of humanity, it’s odd that the activism has such passionate fans and allies.

The trans extremists threaten not only the standing of the LGBTQ+ movement, but the hard-won gains of the anti-discrimination movement of the past 50 years. To start with, the point at issue is not compassion for people in pain, nor the rights of trans women and trans men, which are clearly laid out in law. What is being sought by a small minority is the eradication of the very notion that women exist. What the small minority of largely ‘natal men’ campaigners actually want is for sex to be declared a matter of the imagination – specifically their own.

If these fantasists got their way any individual could declare themselves any sex – or none – at any time. Unfortunately for this group, the basis of discrimination law is that people have characteristics which lead to others unjustifiably depriving them of opportunities. Remove this capacity to claim discrimination and any remedy against injustice becomes impossible to enforce. So much for pay gap reporting or claims for equal pay.

But what does that matter compared to the thrill of Validation?

Funny, or no?

Critics may have raved about This Is Going to Hurt, the television adaptation based on Adam Kay’s memoir about life as a junior doctor at the sharp end of maternity healthcare.

The response has been less rapturous among mothers, however. Many viewers praised the series, starring Ben Whishaw, for its dark humour and unflinching portrayal of NHS maternity services. But midwives and women said that the male doctor’s wisecracks as his patients faced life-or-death situations were “misogynistic” and “unfunny”.

The director, a woman, said she wanted to keep it real, but many women chose different terms.

They claimed that the “condescending” attitude of the lead protagonist reminded them of the traumatic experiences of childbirth. Anita Singh, a critic for The Daily Telegraph, said that anyone who had had a traumatic birth should “avoid it like the plague”.

…

Milli Hill, an author and founder of the Positive Birth Movement, said that the lead character’s attitude towards women in his care was “nasty”. She said: “Kay doesn’t realise that what he is exposing is that paternalistic, misogynistic attitude where women are objects in the background and the doctors are the celebrity lifesavers. It is trauma and I don’t find it funny. In his defence, the system does dehumanise people and people who are working in it are going to begin to use humour to deflect from their difficult feelings.

“I’ve spoken to a lot of midwives over the past ten years, and they say it’s very difficult to carry on being caring when you’re under all that pressure, you’re overstretched, overworked and you can see people suffering and can’t help. It would be progress if this were a programme saying, ‘This is wrong, what can we do to change it?’, but it’s celebrating it as a joke.”

Well, you know – women. They’re funny, aren’t they.

Foxy Maugham seems to consider Ben Hunte a reliable source, and a Conservative peer warns him that the record shows he’s not.

The BBC had to remove large parts of Hunte’s article on the Keira Bell puberty blocker ruling after complaints of inaccuracies. Hunte left the BBC to work for Vice.

Foxy threw his weight around.

Not everyone is impressed with Foxy’s approach.

Charles Windsor identifies as a guy with medical expertise, and he doesn’t hesitate to use his notoriety and money to thrust his fake expertise on the world. Edzard Ernst writes:

Yet, his relentless efforts are not appreciated by everyone (another British understatement!). There are those who view his interventions as counter-productive distractions from the important and never-ending task to improve modern healthcare. There are those who warn that integrating SCAM [so-called alternative medicine] into our medical routine will render healthcare less efficient. There are those who claim that the Prince’s preoccupation with matters that he is not qualified to fully comprehend is a disservice to public health. And there are those who insist that the role of the heir to the throne does not include interfering with health politics.

And those who say all of the above.

Charles Windsor could after all have gone to medical school (assuming he’s clever enough to pass the exams) and gotten the appropriate qualifications to instruct the world on medical subjects, but he didn’t do that, so what gives him the right to leverage his fame to meddle in the subject? It makes as much sense as Trump suggesting we inject ourselves with bleach.

I have observed Charles’ efforts around SCAM for the last 30 years. Occasionally, I was involved in some of them. For 19 years, I have headed the world’s most productive team of researchers in SCAM. This background puts me in an unique position to write an account of Charles’ ‘love affair’ with SCAM. My recently published ‘unauthorised biography’ is not just a simple outline of Charles’ views and actions but also a critical analysis of the evidence that does or does not support them.

I want to read that.

There’s a Guardian series: Living in a woman’s body. Of course you know what comes next: they get a man to talk about living in a woman’s body.

For the most part, our bodies are arbitrary. We get the body we get at birth: our eye colour, our hair colour, our skin colour. We have no say in those things at the moment we are born but, talking to my friend, I realised that subsequent changes are within our grasp.

Some are, some aren’t. You can’t make yourself taller or shorter. (There are ways of adjusting height a little bit but they’re horribly drastic. Not recommended.) You can’t make yourself older or younger. You can’t add arms or legs. You can’t swap heads. You can’t change sex.

None of us are beholden to our bodies. That is not to say that our bodies aren’t vital; they are. Being a woman – cisgender or trans – can feel like you are being set up to fail from the start, and our bodies often affect how well we are able to function within society.

No. He’s not a woman, and if he felt as if he was being set up to fail from the start, it’s not because he’s a woman. It’s not a matter of “our bodies” because his is a man’s body.

But I believe in individual bodily autonomy; a refusal to let the system predetermine or limit your choices is one of the ways we attack patriarchal structures.

No. There is no “we” there, because he is not a woman. He accepted a slot in a series about women, and he talked about himself in a piece about women. We are not a “we” with Juno Dawson.

Tony Blair still knows who women are.

When he was leader, there were no arguments about sex and gender, trans rights and toppling statues. Starmer will have to go into battle over the culture wars, he says. “The polls might say voters don’t care but if you dig a little deeper, what they are really saying is we don’t like all this stuff that is being shoved at us.”

I assume he is going to cite the third way again, but Blair comes down firmly on the side of the author JK Rowling. “They [voters] don’t want a situation where women can’t talk about being women. I have this conversation quite often with Labour people and I know their inclination is to walk round this issue, but I am telling you to go right into it and resolve it in a way that makes it absolutely clear where you stand. That is how to shut down the Tories on it.”

He is risking the ire of the trans lobby now. “Of course, we shouldn’t be transphobic and we should have equal rights for trans people. But equal rights doesn’t mean you can’t use the phrase ‘pregnant woman’. If you went to Sedgefield and had that conservation, they would think you were bonkers.” The younger generation, he admits, think differently. “Leo always says to me, ‘Don’t go there, Dad. There are feelings and there are facts, but right now feelings are more important.’ ”

It depends on what the feelings are, and anyway the feelings are about the facts – there is no crisp division between them. Feelings of rage that women will keep insisting on their own rights are not more important than facts about who is and who is not a woman. To put it another way: trans people aren’t the only people with feelings, women have some too, and we have very strong feelings about being disappeared by human rights organizations.

But he would never have therapy, he told me two years ago. “I just think if you’re not careful you get obsessed with introspection and it’s also because, in the work I do now, when I go and visit these countries where kids will be growing up in a family where at least one of the siblings has died of a childhood disease and the parents are scraping money together and living day by day, you kind of think the West’s desire to be endlessly self-absorbed is not very healthy.”

Yes you kind of do. And of course the two are deeply intertwined. The whole idea of being in the “wrong body,” of literally being the sex you’re not, requires a huge substructure of self-obsession to hold it up. There’s a lot to be said for just taking some things as written and doing something else with your life.

No, trans women don’t experience misogyny, because they’re not women. They may experience fear and/or hatred of trans people, but they don’t experience hatred of women, because of not being women.

Men like Montgomerie want to steal everything that’s ours. On principle.