Category: Notes and Comment Blog

AI malfunction.

Maybe, just maybe, it’s not actually such a nice thing for a man to get a woman to gestate a baby for him, and then walk off into the sunset with that motherless baby. Maybe it’s not actually all that cool to produce a motherless baby on purpose.

My son, Elijah Northwood, was born just before midnight earlier this year, on Sunday March 8, 2026, International Women’s Day. There is something touching about this. I am his dad, but Elijah is the product of not one but two international women: his Venezuelan egg donor and his Mexican birth mother.

That double helping of good women will have to do him for now, though, because I am a single dad and, what’s more, a gay single dad, hitting the ground running, alone with my son in an Airbnb in Mexico City for as long as it takes to get him both a Mexican and a British passport. Suddenly, I have to be both mother and father to him with no real preparation except anticipation, helpless except for the daily breast milk deliveries from his birth mother, the Google translation app that enables her to contact me with tips and advice, and Uber Eats, which keeps me from starving.

If it were an accident it would be very poignant. But it’s not an accident, he did this on purpose.

In 2021 I bought a house in Mile End, east London, that would be suitable for children even if, as I began to realise during the lonely days of lockdown, I might have to do it on my own. I faced up to the situation and told myself, “I know you want someone on this journey with you but, you know what, let’s just do this.”

Let’s create a baby who will never have a mother. On purpose. Because dude wants one.

As soon as I made that decision, I felt euphoric. I was taking control of my future — and my family’s.

Yes, you were taking control of your kid’s future in quite a drastic way.

The basic cost from the agency is about £65,000 but, typical me, I kept going for the expensive options. The egg donors priced themselves according to how they pegged their “worth” when it comes to looks and genes. I could have chosen a donor at £4,000, but I went for the beautiful donor who priced herself at £15,000. 

Great god almighty. I hadn’t read that bit when I started writing this. What a horrible man.

For the first eight weeks the surrogate expressed breast milk for Elijah and got her boyfriend to deliver it to us. I will never lose touch with her and I will be transparent and open with my son from the start, telling him the whole story and showing him pictures of her and her family.

Oh, how sweet. There’s no chance at all that that will backfire. No way will the kid end up resenting and grieving the substitution of photos for having an actual mother present in his life.

My lowest point was on Mother’s Day, just another day for me and Elijah in the park, but looking around me at all the mums and dads, taking it in turns to hold their kid, I was supersensitive to the fact that Elijah has no mother, that I didn’t have anyone to do that tag-teaming with. It was 3pm and everyone I love was still asleep back in the UK, so I couldn’t even call anyone. I felt very alone.

Oh, honey. That’s so sad. Now think about how the kid is going to feel. Forever.

In my world especially, there is every combination of parenting and none of it is perfect. You just do the best you can to make your child feel healthy, loved and special. And at least I get to be my own boss, with no one telling me what to do. Being on my own with Elijah in Mexico City soon turned me into that dad who isn’t afraid to be totally stupid with him, who sings to him, dances with him, plays peekaboo for longer than I could have believed possible.

There are online trolls criticising me for choosing to be a single gay dad through surrogacy — there’s a thread on Mumsnet that asks, “In which country will he be purchasing an infant?” and others that say being gay is no reason to “buy babies” — but I have never had the slightest sense of that in the village I have built around me.

I see, the people who think men shouldn’t buy themselves motherless children are trolls while he is…what, a saint? A kind generous benefactor who deliberately commissions and pays for a child who will never have a mother? No, potential occasional visits to the nice mujer in Mexico do not count as having a mother.

I had always planned to have two children, but with the shock of being a new dad, that idea went out the window. Now I’m starting to think again about a sibling for Elijah. As I said to myself the other day, as we lolled together in our courtyard in the sunshine, “I’m good at this. I’m a bit of a natural.”

I don’t care what anyone thinks. I was born to do this.”

He doesn’t care what anyone thinks, including his baby in 10 or 15 years.

Originally a comment by Artymorty on Deepity of the day.

Yes we can have a fantasy that we’re the other sex. Yes we can try to live that fantasy 24/7, but we shouldn’t, because it has consequences beyond our personal contentment. In any case living the fantasy 24/7 is not the same thing as reality. Living any fantasy 24/7 is not reality.

There are two major Hollywood sci-fi blockbusters that address this very question, and I’ve always felt like they’re in a kind of dialogue or debate with each other.

The first is The Wachowski Brothers’ The Matrix. Most of us know by now that the film is an allegory for trans ideology. (Helen Joyce devoted a whole chapter in her book Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality to an analysis of it, and the writer/director duo now both identify as transgender “sisters”.) The film acts as an argument for “living the fantasy 24/7”: it argues that the plane of existence we know as the material world may actually be just an artificial level of reality, a virtual world, whose rules can be bent to our wills if we can attune ourselves to the true reality hidden beneath. This idea is surely catnip to the men whose malfunctioning sex drives compel them to wish so badly to be female that they’ll believe any fantasy that offers them the possibility that their wish might come true.

The second film is Ready Player One, directed by Steven Spielberg. The film is set in a dystopian future where the real world is in ruins and humanity spends most of its time online in a virtual reality universe. You can see already the similarity in themes between both films: real world vs. virtual world. And, as in The Matrix, gender identity comes up: an ostensibly male character we meet in the virtual world turns out to actually be a female in the real world. We learn that she’s a butch lesbian who takes comfort in role-playing as a man in her online life. But unlike in The Matrix, her character recognizes that she’s still a woman in reality, and she comes to terms with it, reconciling her fictional identity with reality as the film progresses. In fact, the big moral at the end of Ready Player One can be seen as a direct rebuttal to that of The Matrix: after the big conflict is resolved, the heroes decide to implement limits on humanity’s use of the virtual world, forcing people to make sure that they remain grounded in material reality, no matter how much they may prefer the fantasy and escapism that the online world provides.

The trans activists made a film that argued for “living the fantasy 24/7”. But Spielberg rebutted them with a film that argues instead, as you said, “Living any fantasy 24/7 is not reality.”

Trump is on Team Russia & Iran.

Ten days ago:

Trump said on Monday he did not believe that China and Russia were helping Iran “at all,” even as US intelligence reports in recent months have found that both countries directly support Tehran’s war effort.

Trump said on Truth ​Social that he had seen comments from his critics and opponents that China and Russia were ​helping Iran. Moscow and Beijing maintain close ties with Tehran.

“If they are, it’s ⁠at a very low level, but I don’t believe they are at all. They have too much ​to lose, and we would know about it, and know about it very fast,” Trump wrote.

U.S. intelligence assessments ​from recent months have shown that Russia and China are providing military support to Iran in the form of satellite imagery for targeting purposes and components for weapons, according to two people briefed on the matter.

Well that cuts no ice with Trump, because he knows better. How? His genius brain, that’s how. His uncle taught at MIT.

In September, Trump brushed aside a report that ​Iran acquired satellite images of a base in Jordan from Chinese entities before an attack that killed three US troops there in ​July.

Reports shmeports. Trump’s brain knows better.

Trump: "We have been pretty happy with Russia that they have not gotten involved in Iran … Russia and China have not participated or, participated in a much smaller way than they could have." (Both Russia and China have actively helped Iran fight America.) pic.twitter.com/t2WnMMHn3O

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 21, 2026

Trump’s DoJ wants to help him interfere with the elections in order to prevent a Dem majority.

The Justice Department has moved to preemptively block certification of the results of Alaska’s Senate race if Republican incumbent Sen. Dan S. Sullivan loses his tight race against Democrat Mary Peltola next month.

It doesn’t get much starker than that.

In a lawsuit filed in federal court Thursday, department officials described the candidacy of a third contender in the race — another Republican named Dan J. Sullivan Jr. — as a bid to mislead supporters of Sen. Sullivan into voting for the wrong candidate.

They asked a federal judge to bar the state from certifying the race’s results, should the senator lose by a margin less than the number of votes his same-named challenger receives. In that scenario, the department said, the court should investigate whether that result was tainted by voter confusion.

The move marked a highly unusual bid by the Justice Department to potentially intervene in the outcome of a race that could determine control of the Senate before the election has occurred. 

Yeah that’s highly unusual all right. Not in a good way.

From the National Secular Society:

Secularist, interfaith and human rights groups have united to call for Government action to free a Moroccan activist jailed for ‘blasphemy’ over a t-shirt she wore in London.

The National Secular Society and the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain (CEMB) have coordinated an open letter to foreign secretary Ed Miliband MP calling for “urgent and decisive UK intervention” in the case of Ibtissame Betty Lachgar (pictured), who has spent over a year in a Moroccan prison.

The letter, whose 15 signatories include Index on Censorship, Humanists International and the All Faiths Network, says Lachgar’s imprisonment not only represents a “grave violation of international human rights law”, but also “establishes a dangerous extraterritorial precedent with direct implications for people in the United Kingdom”.

Blasphemy is perhaps the most basic human right there is. The right and freedom to ignore all the claims about magic giant sky-dwelling men who have authority over us are essential to freedom of thought as well as freedom of speech and headgear.

Lachgar, a renowned human rights activist, was arrested in August 2025 and sentenced to 30 months’ imprisonment for sharing a photograph of herself in London wearing a t-shirt reading “Allah is Lesbian.” The t-shirt was originally worn to condemn the death sentences of two lesbians in Iran.

Lachgar was convicted under Article 267-5 of the Moroccan Penal Code, which criminalises “insults” against Islam. The letter warns this effectively extends Morocco’s blasphemy laws “beyond its borders, raising deeply troubling implications”.

There is no Allah in London and there is no Allah in Morocco either. There is no Allah. Deal with it. The Allah-God-Whatever myth is a human invention, because life on earth is scary.

Let her go.

Oh please.

Being trans is an archetypal instantiation of the general spiritual principle that we create our own reality by means of our conscious awareness and its creative, expansive powers of self-creation. pic.twitter.com/SVdrSQyDSq

— Ray Alex Williams (@RayAlexWilliams) October 21, 2026

There’s a little bit of truth to that, in the sense that we can to some extent decide how to react to the various realities that confront us every day. The “to some extent” bit is very important. We can Stoic our way through a mild injury or illness, but we can’t just ignore a missing leg or head. We can be a grownup about missing out on a particular dinner party or night at the opera, but we can’t flourish while living on the street surrounded by fentanyl addicts. We can seem cheerful for the sake of the children, but we can’t keep it up if the children themselves are slaughtered in front of us.

And no, we can’t change sex just by thinking we have. We can’t change sex by any other means either; it can’t be done.

Yes we can have a fantasy that we’re the other sex. Yes we can try to live that fantasy 24/7, but we shouldn’t, because it has consequences beyond our personal contentment. In any case living the fantasy 24/7 is not the same thing as reality. Living any fantasy 24/7 is not reality. Some such fantasies may be harmless I suppose, but not if there are dependents who are harmed, not if there are bystanders who are harmed, not if there are people who don’t want their realities confused with other people’s fantasies.

Skip the self creation. Create something useful – a table, a house, a wildlife refuge, a prison for Trump and his enablers. We have plenty of selves already; we need ways to get them to grow up.

Trump and his gang of thugs keep violating court orders.

A federal judge raked President Donald Trump’s administration over the coals on Monday in a case involving his plans to renovate a public golf course in Washington, DC. After the administration cut down more than 430 trees without properly notifying US District Judge Ana Reyes, she said last week she was “furious” and issued a court order to stop it.

…

District judges like Reyes ruled that the administration had violated court orders in at least 31 lawsuits over 15 months, according to an Associated Press investigation in May. That’s in addition to more than 250 other examples of noncompliance that judges have found related to immigration cases.

And the judges finding these violations are often Republican-nominated ones.

Any one of these examples could be understood as a mistake or a mishap. But the growing volume of them — along with Trump and those around him often speaking openly about violating court orders, as Trump did Sunday — suggest there’s something more going on. (A whistleblower last year also claimed that a top DOJ official explicitly spoke about the possible need to ignore court orders.)

Suggest??? Gosh, ya think? The fact that he keeps violating court orders suggests that he might possibly have a pattern of violating court orders? Let’s not go crazy here.

Danger.

National security officials have been secretly bracing for the possibility that Donald Trump refuses to accept the midterm election results.

As numerous polls have predicted a big blue wave on Nov. 3, a small group of officials has been laying the groundwork alongside state governments and members of Congress to protect democracy, The Washington Post reported on Tuesday.

The group includes ten current and former Defense Department officials who identify across the political spectrum, the Post reported, and who are concerned the 80-year-old president will sacrifice the nation’s integrity to keep his party in power.

The 80-year-old evil ruthless psychotic president will do whatever he feels like doing to keep himself in power.

With the midterm elections quickly approaching, concerns have grown in recent days of Trump and his allies potentially taking drastic measures to retain Republican control.

Last month, for example, a former conservative judge warned in a New Republic op-ed that “another Jan. 6” could occur on Jan. 3, 2027—the start of a brand-new House after the midterms.

He’ll do whatever he can get away with.

We want it, we want it now, we’re not going to wait around for trained curators, we’re going to take it right now, oops we dropped it.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wanted to move the world. A replica of it, anyway.

Two floor globes said to be used by Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower during World War II are housed in the Pentagon, where subsequent generations of Army leaders became custodians of the artifacts, according to people familiar with their lineage and an accompanying plaque dating them to the 1930s.

The historical significance was attractive to Hegseth, these people said, and his staff requested that the secretary’s office become the new home to one of the 30-inch globes.

Which is a tad inappropriate since Hegseth is no Eisenhower.

Ordinarily, moving historical items within the building is a deliberate process overseen by trained curators. Instead, Hegseth’s staff dispatched its own team to relocate an Eisenhower globe. They lost control of the artifact and dropped it, sending the globe crashing onto its base and impaling the fragile shell near Antarctica, according to those familiar with the incident. The resulting gash appears to be several inches wide.

…

The Army, in an email to The Post, acknowledged that the globe was damaged and said it occurred during an “attempted move” Feb. 3. Aside from the hole, “the spherical portion of the globe was detached from the metal mounting that allows it to rotate,” spokesman Christopher Surridge said in response to questions. Ultimately, the damaged relic was not relocated, he said.

Hegseth and his people can’t even pick up a goddam globe without breaking it. Putin is watching and laughing his ass off.

Now about this consensual hugging thing…

The Dublin Rape Crisis Centre (DRCC) has removed a social media advertisement about consent featuring grandparents hugging their grandchildren.

The video depicted a young girl being uncomfortable receiving a hug from her grandparents…In the advertisement, a voiceover carries the message after the girl expresses discomfort at receiving a hug: “Not everyone wants a hug. Even from the people who love them.”

True, I suppose, but not really something to be managed by outsiders, surely? Wouldn’t the normal thing be behind the scenes conversations or squabbles between child and parents? “I hate it when Auntie Joan squeezes me!” The parent can say “too bad, deal with it” or “I’ll have a word with her” or something in between, because the parent knows the people involved. You see what I mean? The parent knows more about it than the state does – because the state in fact knows nothing at all about it.

The Department of Justice said “We-Consent” is a programme created and developed by the DRCC aimed at informing, educating and engaging the public about all forms of consent.

Which is not relevant to close relatives hugging the children of the broader family. If there has to be a legalistic conversation first then the whole damn point of familial hugging is lost. What is the point of non-parental family hugging the children of said family? To convey affection! Duh! If it becomes like a union meeting that point is lost. The hug has to be a thing that simply bursts out of the non-parental relatives because they love the child.

On the other hand the child may dislike being hugged or the relatives in question or both, but that’s for the families to work out.

And in conclusion, how is this something for a rape crisis centre to deal with?

Oh my god I didn’t know, I didn’t realize, I don’t have the flags ready, whatever shall I do?

Happy International Pronouns Day! pic.twitter.com/Mt9evZYMnQ

— Gay Not Queer (@Gaynotqueer1) October 21, 2026

VE/VER?

Everything is nuts these days. This is even more nuts than most of the things that are nuts these days.

Miller v Chief Constable @LincsPolice & @ukhomeoffice Nov 2026. High Court. Leeds

I have a criminal record. For stalking. With hate markers. The victim is a former police officer, dismissed for Gross Misconduct.

To clarify. This is an actual criminal record. I have a criminal…

— WeAreFairCop (@WeAreFairCop) October 20, 2026

To clarify. This is an actual criminal record. I have a criminal record. And I was given it without being interviewed, informed, questioned, or charged; the CPS were not involved, and there was no magistrate, judge or jury. The Chief Constable just gave it to me because it is in his gift to do so. Because the Home Secretary says he can.

I think the former police officer, dismissed for gross misconduct, is the fragrant Alex Horwood aka Lynsay Watson.

Do the LibDems hate women?

LIB DEM SILENCE: We have made every effort to engage all political parties on the issue of single-sex spaces in the NHS and to ensure they hear directly from female staff affected by the impact of gender identity policies in the workplace.

We have met with representatives from… pic.twitter.com/MfrLtsaW8w

— Darlington Nursing Union (@DarlingtonUnion) October 21, 2026

We have met with representatives from the Labour Government, the Conservatives, and Reform.

We have also repeatedly reached out to the @LibDems, particularly following their troubling treatment of gender-critical women at their recent conference. From @EdwardJDavey, @timfarron, and @HelenMorganMP, we have received only silence.

Given that silence, we hoped the party’s spokesperson for women and equalities, Marie Goldman MP, would want to hear the experiences of frontline NHS nurses involved in a landmark legal case.

Again, silence.

Women who believe that biological sex matters, that truth matters, and that every person deserves dignity and respect are hearing that message loud and clear.

Not very Lib and not very Dem.

Absolutely breathtaking. The UK doctors’ union doesn’t give the teeniest tiniest rat’s ass about women and their rights. They’ve issued a Statement to underline this surprising indifference.

Since the April 2025 Supreme Court judgment on the definition of sex under the Equality Act 2010, the BMA has been deeply concerned about the potential harms that the ruling would have on our trans and non-binary members, colleagues, patients and wider community.

We have previously written to the EHRC (Equality and Human Rights Commission) and NHS England raising these concerns and calling on them to ensure any new or revised guidance must clearly set out how equitable access to healthcare and inclusive spaces for trans and non-binary people in healthcare settings can be achieved.

Not so much as a whisper about women.

NHS England has now published two further guidance documents for NHS organisations:

– Privacy, dignity and safety in hospital accommodation – revised guidance on same-sex accommodation for patients

– Guidance on NHS staff facilities – new guidance on the provision and use of NHS staff facilities.

We are deeply concerned that this high-level guidance will result in local policies that are exclusionary to trans and non-binary staff and patients. It will affect their ability to access and work in the NHS and have negative consequences for cisgender people. We are calling for urgent clarity from NHS England on how employers can implement the guidance in a way that is safe and inclusive of trans and non-binary people, who are already one of society’s most marginalised groups and who are becoming ever more fearful of harassment and discrimination when accessing healthcare.

In other words they’re calling for NHS England to go back to letting men be in women’s wards and all the rest of it. They’re calling for NHS England to go back to giving men everything they demand at the expense of women. Their fear doesn’t even register with the BMA. Why’s that?

All staff and patients deserve to be treated with equal care and to have access to safe, appropriate and accessible facilities. The BMA supports fair and equitable access for all trans and non-binary healthcare staff and patients to accommodation, services and care according to their gender, while ensuring their privacy, dignity and safety.

For the billionth time, that is not possible. You can’t give men access to women’s accommodation, services and care without taking it away from women. Obviously. If you put men in it, it’s no longer women’s. Where is your concern for women?

We understand that this is a deeply upsetting time for many of our trans and non-binary members and patients and would like to reaffirm our support and commitment to them.

We don’t give the tiniest shit about women though. Fuck them. Bitches.

It’s breathtaking.

Is JK Rowling taking the BBC’s calls? It appears not.

When the BBC announced last week it was making a two-part documentary series about JK Rowling, trans activists reacted with all the finely modulated restraint we’ve come to expect from them. On Bluesky, the social-media equivalent of Hades, comments ranged from ‘Fuck the UK’s anti-trans hag’ to ‘can someone please just nuke us already’.

…

In truth, everything we know about the Rowling series so far suggests the corporation has failed to take seriously last year’s leaked internal memo warning that its output is unduly influenced by trans ideologues.

To put it very very very mildly.

Take the press release for a start. This describes Rowling as ‘one of Britain’s most polarising public figures’, which implies some kind of equivalence between her mass popularity and the anger felt towards her by a tiny, if vocal, group of hysterical activists. Yet she has many magnitudes more fans than haters.

Good point. Pole number one is millions of paying fans; pole number two is a few hundred bed-wetters.

Lest we need reminding, JK Rowling has sold more than 600 million Harry Potter books. Films based on Harry Potter have grossed $7.7 billion. Polarising? Sure, if you imagine the enthusiasm of millions of fans equates to the hurt feelings of a shrill, self-obsessed minority who want the world to revolve around them.

And not just shrill and self-obsessed but also crazed and delusional. Humans can’t change sex. “Trans activists” are activists in the cause of insisting that humans can indeed change sex, and that they can do it just by saying so.

Yet the arrogance of the BBC in pontificating about Rowling wasn’t the most remarkable thing about its press release. Notably absent was any reference to her participation. Had she agreed to take part, you can be sure the publicity would have led with that announcement.

Never mind, I’m sure the BBC still has Jonathan “India” Willoughby’s phone number.

Seriously?

Elon Musk ordered the slowdown of a version of SpaceX’s Starlink that Ukraine has relied on in its war against Russia, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday, citing U.S. officials and people familiar with the matter.

Musk, SpaceX’s founder and CEO, last week “capped the speeds at which Ukrainian hardware could stay connected to the satellite-based network,” the Journal reported. The decision left some Ukrainian drones virtually inoperable, according to the newspaper.

Musk and President Donald Trump, who have both recently criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, discussed the move to throttle Starlink “soon after” the change first became public last week, two people told the Journal.

One of the people who spoke with the news outlet claimed that Musk discussed the matter with multiple senior Trump administration officials, including the president himself, prior to imposing the Starlink speed cap.

I’m all out of words.

Well now wait a second.

But what are we calling “conversion practices”?

It’s Bridget Phillipson, so we can assume she’s talking about Our Trans Siblings, but in fact it could apply to all sorts of things.

It could apply to suicidal people for example. It would be conversion practice to try to convince them that life can be worth living. It could apply to murderous people; conversion practice would be trying to talk them out of murdering anyone.

Yes, people can get things wrong, of course. There’s no need to talk people out of being lesbian or gay.

On the other hand there’s a huge area of life that’s all about decisions, and discussing them. They can be trivial or they can shape a person’s life. Sometimes people actually want advice or argument or cautions or questions. Sometimes people are ambivalent about discussing or not discussing. There are a million variables. It’s simplistic to call it “conversion practices” just because it’s about the fad for deciding one is in the wrong body.

Also, news flash, it’s just not the case that every single person who decides xir is in the wrong body is correct about that rather odd claim.

Also also, deciding you’re trans is not the same thing as realizing you’re lesbian or gay or bisexual. LGB people don’t have to change anything. People who think they’re in the wrong body mostly want to change that body, or at least disguise it in some drastic ways. Bridget Phillipson apparently wants them all to dash into it without hesitation. Not her mess to clean up, is it.

Female Union boss stabs women in the back.

Statement on NHS England guidance on single-sex spaces: pic.twitter.com/L189Ryoep0

— Andrea Egan UNISON General Secretary (@AndreaEganGS) October 19, 2026

Of course, placing men on women’s wards does not offer WOMEN safety, dignity, or privacy, but Andrea Egan, a woman, does not care.

Make it make sense.

There is precedent.

I have been trying to think of what Trump’s hideous “ballroom” project reminds me of — and I finally have it — it is Nicolai Ceausescu’s infamous and unfinished House of the People in communist Romania, which also brought awfulness to a lovely downtown. It features a huge… pic.twitter.com/BwcP6lYkc1

— Timothy Snyder (@TimothyDSnyder) October 20, 2026

It features a huge ballroom with niches for portraits of the dictator and his wife and a sliding roof so that a helicopter can enter and exit. The building also had a nuclear bunker. The aesthetic sense of the two men is much the same but Trump’s construction will probably be even worse.

Trump is very competitive that way.