Originally a comment by Sackbut on We need to be asking “fair to whom?”

I think here again the distinction between “disproportionate advantage” and “category advantage”, as described by Jon Pike in his recent paper, become important. We don’t look at individual adults to see if they are within the skill capabilities of children before deciding whether these particular adults are allowed to participate in children’s sports, we have separate categories for children based on the idea that children have abilities and needs different from adults, and beyond that we don’t test any further. Age grouping is a category advantage. Sex grouping is also a category advantage.

NPR recently interviewed an endocrinologist (why not a sports physiologist?) who basically shrugged his shoulders and said “We simply don’t know” regarding trans athletes having an advantage against “cis” athletes, again missing the point. We do know that men have significant advantages against women, and we have sex grouping in sports partly (partly!!!) for that reason. It isn’t “trans versus cis”, but “men versus women”. They are arguing that men should be allowed to compete in the women’s division, but only those extra-special men who claim to be women, not other men. Some people are explicitly arguing that all sex divisions should go away, but most do not seem to realize that’s what they are arguing, ultimately.

So I decided to Learn More and went to their “Day of Pink” page.

Or is it the Courage Across Canada Tour page?

Or is it the Reopening With Pride page?

Or is it the United We Stand a Chance page?

It’s hard to tell. We’re offered all those on the front page. Much slogan, very little explanation.

But anyway, they do tell us some things, in pink lettering on a white page.

April 12, 2023 is the International Day of Pink!

Discrimination takes many shapes, whether it’s based on race, age, disabilities, gender or sexuality. The 2SLGBTQIA+ community is no stranger to the bullying and violence that stems from hateful beliefs. While progress has been made towards removing these social barriers from our society, discrimination still persists. So, every year, on the second Wednesday of April, we urge people around the world to put on a pink shirt and stand in solidarity with the 2SLGBTQIA+ community to continue fighting for equality and acceptance.

Ok, that was not clear from the Toronto school board tweet. Of course one could take “pink” as a clue, but since all the rest of the content was general, that didn’t seem to be what they meant. Also, by the way, pink doesn’t=gay or homosexual or same-sex attracted in general, it’s a guy thing. On the other hand in straight world pink very often does signify girls and sometimes women. If wear pink day is about “the 2SLGBTQIA+ communninny” why isn’t there a color for the female ones? Just the usual reason? Women don’t matter? Or if it does mean girls and women then why is it for the 2SLGBTQIA+ communninny? They seem confused.

Whether it’s in Canada or beyond, we need to stand up against hateful beliefs to keep the clock from turning backwards on our efforts towards establishing equality for the 2SLGBTQIA+ community. It’s time now to educate the future generation to not repeat history, demand more of our politicians and policy makers, and participate in creating real change through real effort.

What’s that got to do with wearing a pink shirt?

International Day of Pink has one purpose, to create a more inclusive and diverse world.

How can it do that? How can urging children to wear a pink shirt to school do that? Seriously.

We do this by encouraging young people to challenge social norms, ask more of their educators, and stand up against bullying towards their 2SLGBTQIA+ peers. Over the years we have worked with countless educators, politicians and organizations around Canada to spread this message and create young activists for this mission. We hope to continue this work and reach more communities with every passing year. We can only do this with your support and involvement. So please consider sharing our work, wearing our merch, donating to our cause, and joining our movement in any way you can.

Oh there it is – wear our merch!

Now I understand.

Wat?

What are they even talking about? How does “wearing pink” signify (or signal or advertise or promote or nudge or push) creating a more inclusive and diverse world? How does it at the same time stand in solidarity with the 2SLGBTQIAZMDJRVTPXMKLQ+ communities?

This time it’s not so much enraging as sick-making. It’s so smarmy, so creepy, so damp hand in yours and soft voice telling you you are loved when all you want to do is fling the hand off and run away as fast as you can go.

I hope all the students and teachers wear green and black and yellow and sky blue and not one speck of pink.

One, ten, many Savita Halappanavars. The Washington Post has the details:

At 36, she’d already experienced a long line of miscarriages, but none of the pregnancies had been more than five weeks along. Now she had to deliver a nearly 16-week fetus — a daughter she’d planned to call Bunny.

And when she did she immediately started hemorrhaging.

She had intended to deliverthe fetus in a hospital, a doctor by her side. When her water broke the night before — at least six weeks ahead of when a fetus could survive on its own — she drove straight to the emergency room, where she said the doctor explained that she was experiencing pre-viability preterm prelabor rupture of the membranes (PPROM), which occurs in less than 1 percent of pregnancies.

Remember that? From the Halappanavar case? Medically speaking it’s essential to do a D&C when that happens so that the woman doesn’t bleed to death. The way Savita did. It’s standard of care.

But in Florida it’s “Go home and die.”

At the hospital in Coral Springs, Fla., Cook received antibiotics, records show.Then she was sent home to wait.

Which is medical malpractice.

Cook’s experience reflects a new reality playing out in hospitals in anti abortion states across the country — where because of newly enacted abortion bans, people with potentially life-threatening pregnancy complications are being denied care that was readily available before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June.

Catholic hospitals have been doing this all along. A big hospital in Seattle merged with a Catholic chain recently so now they follow the Catholic woman-killing rules. It shouldn’t be allowed but it is. Women just don’t matter.

When abortion was legal across the country, doctors in all states would typically offer to induceor perform a surgical procedure to end the pregnancy when faced with a pre-viability PPROM case — which is the standard of care, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), and an option that many women choose. Especially before the 20-week mark, a fetus is extremely unlikely to survive without any amniotic fluid.

But in the 18 states where abortion is now banned before fetal viability, many hospitals have been turning away pre-viability PPROM patients as doctors and administrators fear the legal risk that could come with terminating even a pregnancy that could jeopardize the mother’s well-being, according to 12 physicians practicing in antiabortion states.

Could kill the mother. Isn’t it odd how the dead fetus matters more than the living adult woman. It’s almost as if it’s just an excuse to torment and murder women.

One of the sponsors of Florida’s 15-week abortion ban defended the currentlaw as written, saying the existing exception should be sufficient to cover cases with serious health risks. An explicit exception for PPROM is not necessary, she added.

“The bottom line is we value life, and we would like to protect life,” said former Florida state senator Kelli Stargel (R). “We don’t want to give a gaping exception that anyone can claim.”

Liar. She’s not protecting life, she’s protecting the fetus, even the dead fetus, at the expense of the living woman.

Genevieve Gluck at Reduxx:

A symposium in Nantes intended to raise awareness of the plight of Afghan and Iranian women has been postponed after trans activists threatened to violently ambush the event because of the presence of a gender critical speaker.

Step aside, Afghan and Iranian women, the much more important cause of men who pretend to be women needs all the space and attention and concern.

The Comité Laïcité République (CLR – Republic Secularism Committee), an organization dedicated to promoting secularism “as a force for reflection, dialogue, with a balanced tone,” issued a statement on April 5 announcing that their symposium – entitled “Women, Life, Freedom” after the mantra of the Iranian women’s protest movement – would be postponed to a later and as yet unspecified date. The event had previously been planned for April 15 at the Château des ducs de Bretagne in Nantes.

The activists were enraged over the planned presence of Marguerite Stern, a French women’s rights campaigner known for having critical stances on gender ideology and the sex trade.

Because men who pretend to be women are always more urgent and more in danger than any women. Women in Afghanistan and Iran are pampered princesses compared to men in skirts in Paris.

“Numerous threats inciting violence were made on social media, including the distribution of our poster announcing the event crossed out with a knife, with calls for counter-demonstrations due to the presence of Ms. Stern, an activist feminist, critic of transgender ideology,” read the CLR’s statement.

“This led the organizers to postpone this event for the sake of preserving the safety of the speakers, of all the participants, and to prevent the Château from suffering any damage. The Comité Laïcité République lodged a complaint and informed the Prefect of these threats.”

Threats are entirely legitimate when they’re aimed at disobedient women.

Speaking with Le Figaro regarding the threats of violence from trans activists, Stern compared the accusation of “transphobia” to the label of “Islamophobia”, saying that both terms are used to silence critics. She noted that, according to her detractors, “recalling biological facts and wanting to protect women and children is considered the worst affront.”

Fact. PZ’s sycophants liked to call me both.

Stern is set to speak at the event regarding the state of feminism following the Me Too era. The description of her presentation also mentions that Stern was ousted from her own movement in direct response to her concerns about transgender ideology. Les Collages Contre les Féminicides, a direct action campaign she launched in 2019, involved the creation of murals calling attention to male violence against women and girls.

By January 2020, just under a year after she founded the collective, Stern’s project had been “hijacked” by gender ideology, a situation that she described in a series of posts on Twitter.

“Debates on trans activism are taking up more and more space in feminism, and even garnering all the attention. I interpret this as a new male attempt to prevent women from expressing themselves,” she wrote. “At all times, men have tried to silence women by silencing their revolts. Today they are doing it from within by infiltrating our struggles and taking center stage.”

Indeed they are, and if we resist they punish. It’s a very clever way to destroy feminism, I have to give them that.

The Nation for some reason decided to publish an article by a they/them called Frankie de la Cretaz who has nothing but contempt and hostility for women.

In 2021, the Department of Education announced a formal review of the way Title IX was enforced. The goal was ostensibly to come up with an interpretation of the law that protects transgender students from discrimination.

The proposal unveiled on Thursday, to put it mildly, does not meet that goal. Instead, under the cover of a ban on what it calls “one-size-fits-all” anti-trans policies, it makes explicit allowances for restrictions on trans participation in sports to ensure what it describes as “fairness in competition” and “preventing sports-related injury.” Even observers inclined to be generous to the Biden administration about the proposal acknowledge that it would allow for targeted bans against trans students, particularly in high school. 

Male trans students, they means but of course doesn’t say. It always always always has to be concealed that the people being championed in these polemics are male people who want to displace and cheat women.

…it’s important to understand these terms for what they are: transphobic talking points that have been honed and weaponized by anti-trans groups. They sound reasonable but they are incredibly insidious—and now they are being used by a supposedly trans-friendly administration to justify its endorsement of anti-trans policies.

Yes it’s just so incredibly insidious to try to protect women’s sports and the women who play them. The not insidious thing to do would be to sit back and watch cheerfully as men destroy women sports and injure the women who play them.

Title IX, because of the way it is written, allows for this kind of discrimination against transgender athletes, and transgender girls and women, in particular. That’s because when Title IX was passed, the need for its existence relied on arguments that there were biological differences between girls and boys, which created a need for separate divisions.

Ah yes those silly obsolete arguments of yesteryear that there are biological differences between girls and boys. Isn’t it glorious to live now, when we know so much better??

It made the definition of “girlhood” reliant on a body, rather than on a concept of gender. These arguments, built into the very fabric of Title IX itself, allow for the protection of cisgender girls to be maintained at the expense of transgender girls.

At the expense of. We’re so rude, so greedy, so callous, so heartless, protecting girls at the expense of boys.

Let’s examine the two concepts the DOE leaned on to justify the discrimination against trans kids. The first is “fairness in sports.”  This is a red herring, an elusive and unattainable concept. Sports are inherently unfair.

…

When anti-trans groups harp on the issue of fairness, they are framing the issue in a misleading way. We need to be asking, fair to whom? When we think about fairness we should think about justice, which requires centering the most marginalized people in the room—and that is transgender women and girls. It is that group that we should be most concerned about including, rather than making rules at their expense.

Men who claim to be women are the most marginalized people in the room. Women who are mere women however are the least marginalized people in this particular room. Men are at the mercy of all-powerful women. Who knew?

The rule’s second anti-trans loophole, the supposed prevention of sports-related injury, implies that transgender women and girls are inherently bigger and stronger than cisgender girls, and that cisgender girls will be harmed if trans girls are allowed to compete. There is no evidence to support this. All sports come with the risk of injury and a cis girl is just as likely to be injured by a larger cis girl than she is by a trans girl on the field.

A girl is just as likely to be injured by a larger girl as she is by a man on the field? No. That’s just a lie.

The Biden administration has capitulated to well-worn anti-trans talking points, ones which transgender advocates have spent years trying to dismantle. These arguments, which transphobic groups frame as “protecting girls,” actually put our most vulnerable girls at risk by harming trans girls. If you want to protect women and girls, you need to be protecting all women and girls, not just the ones you deem worthy of protection, and not at the expense of the group of people most likely to be the victims of discrimination and violence.

If you want to protect workers, you need to be protecting all workers, not just the ones who work in factories and meatpacking plants, and not at the expense of the group of people who make the rules and pay their workers as little as they can.

The Nation should be embarrassed to publish this dreck.

Nancy Kelley underlines her contempt for women.

That is, to make it possible to exclude MEN from lesbian support groups, women’s book clubs, women only shortlists.

That is, to make it easier to exclude MEN from women’s wards in hospitals and single-sex services and women’s sports. MEN.

If you change the law it will make it easier to exclude MEN from aspects of public life that are reserved FOR WOMEN.

It’s assumed that excluding MEN from what belongs to women is a good outcome, more reasonable, sensible, and balanced. MEN. Not women of any kind, but MEN.

News from Tennessee:

The Tennessee statehouse has expelled two Democratic politicians who led a gun control protest that halted legislative proceedings last week. In a rare move, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives voted 72-25 to expel Justin Jones and 69-26 to remove Justin Pearson.

But an expulsion vote failed against a third Democratic lawmaker, Gloria Johnson, who also joined the protest. Republicans said the trio had brought “disorder and dishonour to the House”.

Republicans kicked out two elected Representatives of the other party because they felt like it.

Republicans said the trio had brought “disorder and dishonour to the House”. Crowds of protesters have attended the State Capitol since a school shooting. The 27 March attack at Nashville’s Covenant School killed six people, including three children.

The so-called “Tennessee Three” took to the House floor chanting “no action, no peace” during a protest on 30 March, which also saw hundreds of pro-gun control demonstrators converge on the statehouse. Mr Jones, 27, and Mr Pearson, 28, used a megaphone and banged on the House lectern as they made rousing speeches and addressed the protesters who crowded around the chamber’s public viewing platform.

“We don’t want to be up here, but we have no choice but to find a way… to disrupt business as normal, because business as normal is our children dying,” Mr Pearson said. The chamber’s proceedings were brought to a standstill for nearly an hour. All three also chanted “enough is enough” and “power to the people”. Political analysists said Ms Johnson may have been spared expulsion because she did not use a megaphone. However she has suggested that Republicans did not expel her because she is white, whereas Mr Jones and Mr Pearson are both black.

US President Joe Biden, a Democrat, slammed the expulsions as “shocking, undemocratic, and without precedent”.

Without precedent only because in the old days they were never allowed to get elected in the first place.

Lawmakers argued for hours about the expulsions on Thursday, which are the first such actions taken without the support of both parties in Tennessee’s modern history. Ms Johnson was just one vote short of the required two-thirds majority to expel her, with her supporters in the chamber cheering at the result that she would remain.

The three lawmakers acknowledged they broke House rules by speaking without being formally recognised, but insisted their actions did not warrant expulsion. Some Republican members said the Democrats’ actions amounted to an insurrection, with House Speaker Cameron Sexton, a Republican, comparing the incident to the Capitol Riots.

Oh come on. Three lawmakers talking without being recognized, even with two bullhorns, is not comparable to the full-on assaults of the Capitol riots.

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Thanks for participating peacefully.

She added: “Diversity promotes critical discussions, new understandings and enriches the academic experience. But we may also find ourselves exposed to divergent views and even views we find personally abhorrent.”

Please describe in detail how the fact (or even the idea) that men can’t be women is “personally abhorrent.” Please explain how this is no more than a “divergent view” that must be shouted down. Does not the truth of this simple statement have any bearing at all on the discussion?

The reality of sex is no more a “divergent view” than the existence of rain and sunshine. See how far you get protesting them. I can see how someone heavily invested in the belief that men can be women might find the reality of sex inconvenient, but that inconvenience, however passionately (or violently) expressed, does nothing at all to change the facts of the matter. If this factuality is irrelevent, please let us all know when you’ll be congratulating peaceful protests against gravity and the inability of two solid objects occupying the same space simultaneously. For some, these facts could very well be as personally abhorrent (there are more people injured in falls than there are trans identified people, and it sure would be handy not to run into walls and trees), though you’re less likely to get a crowd of people gathering to bully others into agreeing that they aren’t just the consequences of the laws of material reality. Please explain how the intractably binary nature and immutability of sex, is any different than gravitation and the impenetrability of matter. I’ll be right here, wishing I could float through walls.

Where they make a desert and call it peace (ubi solitudinem faciunt pacem appelant – Tacitus).

Riley Gaines hit out at [sharply criticized] San Francisco State University (SFSU) after an email was sent to all students thanking those who “participated peacefully in Thursday evening’s event” when demonstrators stormed a talk being held by Gaines and allegedly physically assaulted her.

Hey students thanks for not murdering Riley Gaines. Nice one.

A video posted on social media showed Gaines being escorted to safety by police after dozens of protestors got inside the venue, with the ex-college athlete claiming she was “physically hit twice by a man,” and trapped in an empty classroom for three hours.

Ya see that’s participating peacefully. She’s not dead or anything, so peace, man.

An email was sent to SFSU students by Jamillah Moore, the university’s vice president for student affairs, discussing Thursday’s events.

Moore thanked those students who “participated peacefully in Thursday’s event”, whilst making no mention of the disruption or alleged assault on Gaines.

Yes thanks a lot students. The one who kept screaming “Fuckyoubitch!!”? Thank her especially; really good work.

She added: “Diversity promotes critical discussions, new understandings and enriches the academic experience. But we may also find ourselves exposed to divergent views and even views we find personally abhorrent.

“These encounters have sometimes led to discord, anger, confrontation and fear. We must meet this moment and unite with a shared value of learning.”

The email directed students to the university counselling service, and its “equality and community inclusion” initiative, as “you reflect, process and begin to heal.”

Aw the poor kids, I hope they can heal quckly and thoroughly so that they can go scream at more women who don’t want to be cheated out of wins or scholarships or prizes by men.

American Oversight calls itself non-partisan and yet it uses the euphemism “gender-affirming care” as if it were affirmation to excise children’s genitals and/or breasts.

“It’s actually empowered men who really hate women.”

Self-obsession is the new “progressive.”

If questioned, say it’s complicated and you haven’t figured it out yet.

The captains or vice-captains of eight inter-county teams playing in the Ladies Gaelic Football Association (LGFA) league finals have been advised by the association’s media team to avoid expressing opinions on its new transgender policy.

The LGFA will host a round of media interviews on Tuesday with the players ahead of the four finals. The Sunday Independent has obtained a copy of an LGFA briefing issued to the players that contains suggested responses to questions on controversial topics journalists might ask.

A question about the LGFA’s new transgender policy, which was introduced in February, is listed at the top of the likely topics to be raised.

And what is the new policy? Silly question. The usual “Let the gentleman play and shut up about it, ladies.”

The LGFA has refused to give any details of what consultation or medical advice it relied on before introducing the policy, which has been criticised by some players and referees as “dangerous” for allowing transgender women to play once they meet criteria set down by a new transgender applications committee.

How can it possibly be dangerous to let men play on women’s teams??! It’s not as if men are bigger and stronger and faster so how can they possibly be a risk to women??????

After the LGFA’s new transgender policy was published a few weeks ago, Kildare goalkeeper Mary Hulgraine tweeted: “Really? I’m all for equality and inclusion. But in a high intensity sport where there 100pc is physical contact… this is just dangerous. Genetically this is wrong. It goes against why female sports was created in the first place.”

But female sports was created by a lot of backward unenlightened bigoted bad people who didn’t understand about trans women.

Rubbing Our Noses In It chapter eleventy billion:

Transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney has secured another major partnership deal, days after Bud Light was criticized for partnering with her.

Mulvaney, an actor and comedian who has been documenting her transition across social media, is now a sports bra model for Nike. 

Wait wait wait wait wait.

What is a sports bra? What is the whole point of a sports bra? Why is a sports bra necessary?

Because breasts, that’s why. Because breasts stick out from the body, and bounce if the body is in rapid motion, and that’s uncomfortable at best. Because breasts need support in the activities that make up sports.

Dylan Mulvaney doesn’t have breasts.

It’s just so fucking insulting, this kind of thing – deliberately insulting. “Haha ladies it pisses you off that we pay Dylan to model makeup and dresses? Ok we’ll ratchet it up: now it’s Tampax, and sports bras for his flat chest! Hahaha sucks to be you, Karen.”

Ah yes, trans ballet at last; just what we all needed.

Do check out the Missoula Gala Performance. The dancers do the moves and then he just hangs out, tiptoeing around a bit like a burglar looking for the exit. The dancers are on pointe and he’s not, yet he’s somehow the star. Sums up the whole ludicrous mess.

A new front is opened in Musk’s war on all of us. Nick Cohen explains:

If you follow the tech news, you will know that Elon Musk has gone to war against Substack. He wants to punish it for launching a feature called Notes, which he fears may compete with his increasingly rickety Twitter platform.

Yesterday morning I found that no one could retweet Substack links to my pieces. By the evening, Musk had lifted the ban. But if Twitter users clicked on a link, they received a warning that made it sound as if they were about to enter the dark web.

It’s true. I tried it and sure enough I got the warning. Furthermore, I was unable to reply to Nick’s tweet telling him so. I had to send him a DM to tell him Musk appears to have blocked replies to him. What a shit that man is.

Texas senator is fine with a Supreme Court justice’s acceptance of bribes.

How does the Wall Street Journal defend Thomas’s cheery acceptance of bribes?

The left’s assault on the Supreme Court is continuing, and the latest front is the news that Justice Clarence Thomas has a rich friend who has hosted the Justice on his private plane, his yacht, and his vacation resort. That’s it. That’s the story. Yet this non-bombshell has triggered breathless claims that the Court must be investigated, and that Justice Thomas must resign or be impeached. Those demands give away the real political game here.

But “the left” didn’t invent the rule that travel donations (aka “his private plane, his yacht”) must be reported.

The left didn’t even invent the fact that lavish gifts can look like, and can be, bribes.

ProPublica, a left-leaning website, kicked off the fun with a report Thursday that Justice Thomas has a longtime friendship with Harlan Crow, a wealthy Texas real-estate developer. The intrepid reporters roamed far and wide to discover that the Justice has sometimes traveled on Mr. Crow’s “Bombardier Global 5000 jet” and that each summer the Justice and his wife spend a vacation week at Mr. Crow’s place in the Adirondacks.

The piece is loaded with words and phrases intended to convey that this is all somehow disreputable: “superyacht”; “luxury trips”; “exclusive California all-male retreat”; “sprawling ranch”; “private chefs”; “elegant accommodation”; “opulent lodge”; “lavishing the justice with gifts.” And more.

Are those words and phrases intended to convey that it’s all disreputable or that it’s all very lavish? There’s a difference. The lavishitude certainly contributes to the disreputability, but then, that’s quite a sound reason for reporting it, no?

Ben Bradshaw’s grotesque waving away of femicide is from a New Statesman interview with Rosie Duffield.

For at least half a decade now, Labour, like many political parties in the West, has struggled with the contentious issue of “self-ID” – the proposed right of people to self-identity as another sex or gender.

Notice a funny thing about this. The word or label “self-ID” doesn’t literally mean to self-identity as another sex or gender. It just means [the right to] self-identify. We’re given a translation that claims it means [only] to self-identify as another sex or gender. Not, you see, to self-identify as an animal or a tree or a building or a planet – just as another sex or gender. Well what does that tell you? That self-identifying as something you’re not is, in every other context, just an absurdity, or a game. It tells you that everyone knows that self-identifying as something is not magic and does not make you that something unless you already are it. It gives the game away – “We all know that you can’t really do this, but we’ve decided to humor this one category of people who pretend you can.”

Some Labour members and voters, and an undetermined number of the party’s MPs, think that self-ID threatens the rights of women to single-sex spaces. The most prominent critic of the idea within the party is Rosie Duffield, the Labour MP for Canterbury since 2017.

…

Why is the subject so fraught? For Duffield, who lived through the fights within Labour over Brexit and anti-Semitism, “this is the only issue I’ve been involved in where there is no attempt at collegiate discussion. It’s so divided.” Any fence-sitting by Starmer, she believes, is only going to alienate both sides.

Ben Bradshaw, a fellow Labour MP and the former culture secretary, is a public critic of Duffield’s. He pushed back against some of her views when we spoke. “Ireland already has self-ID, of course, as do a growing number of European countries. So I think the tide of history is going steadily in one direction,” he argues.

“As far as I’m concerned, Labour’s position is absolutely clear and should not be controversial,” Bradshaw continues, “which is that we favour reforming the gender recognition process to demedicalise it, to reduce the degrading treatment that trans people who want to transition need to go through. We believe there’s absolutely no conflict between trans rights and the protection of safe spaces under the Equality Act.” Bradshaw believes this is “certainly Keir’s position” and the position of most Labour MPs. 

I put the polling data to him. “Of course public opinion in a democracy matters,” he says. “But if governments had always only been guided by public opinion, we wouldn’t have had any of the social advances in this country.”

Nimble footwork. One minute “we believe,” next minute “never mind what most of us believe.” The tide of history is with us, also ignore public opinion.

The complacent waving away of the thousands of women killed every year is the next paragraph.