If a rapist identifies as a woman that rapist is a woman so SHUT UP TERFS, say the police.

Police have been criticised for saying they will record rapes by offenders with male genitalia as being committed by a woman if the attacker “identifies as a female”.

Rape is a thing men do to women. Women can’t return the favor even if they want to, because women don’t have the right equipment. In other news, crime statistics should be accurate as opposed to fanciful.

Police Scotland said that they would log rapes as being carried out by a woman if the accused person insists, even if they have not legally changed gender.

Oh well if the rapist insists he’s a woman whaddya gonna do?

Kenny MacAskill, the former Scottish justice secretary, asked Police Scotland how it would deal with recording rapes after the new laws take effect. Gary Ritchie, assistant chief constable, set out scenarios where a rapist could be recorded as a woman.

They included “where a person born male obtains a full gender recognition certificate and then commits rape” and “where a person born male but who identifies as a female and does not have a full GRC . . . commits rape”. The Sexual Offences (Scotland) Act 2009 defines rape as nonconsensual penetration with a penis, so it cannot be committed by someone without male genitalia.

…

Detective Superintendent Fil Capaldi said: “The sex/gender identification of individuals who come into contact with the police will be based on how they present or how they self-declare, which is consistent with the values of the organisation. Police Scotland requires no evidence or certification as proof of biological sex or gender identity other than a person’s self-declaration, unless it is pertinent to any investigation with which they are linked.”

Is it not pertinent when the crime is rape?

This made me sit up and take notice.

The point is to say don’t push academics to use “the wrong” pronouns, but if you stop to think more about it your hair stands on end. Universities have institutional policies about something absurdly called “misgendering”? Universities have institutional policies that forbid referring to people by what we’ve all learned from infancy is the natural intuitive unforced way to refer to people? Universities have institutional policies that mandate referring to people by anti-intuitive and inaccurate pronouns? Universities have institutional policies that order employees to perform this entire system of lies?

It takes my breath away.

#PennCheats

Another “no she’s the evil person” open letter:

Dancers who accused a leading choreographer of transphobia have claimed she has jeopardised their safety by publicising her resignation.

She was supposed to go quietly.

Earlier this week, the choreographer said she could not “endure this humiliation any longer” and spoke to the media about her decision to resign.

However, in an open letter seen by the BBC, the dancers claim that, by going public, Kay has caused “potential detriment to our careers”.

Why would that be? Oh, because their bullying was shameful? But then the detriment is their doing, not hers. If your behavior can’t stand publicity then that could indicate the behavior is bad behavior. Maybe the dancers should be thinking hard about why the exposure of their bullying could be detrimental to their careers.

In the letter, the dancers say they want to “set the record straight and to ensure that any dancers under the supervision of Rosie Kay do not undergo the same marginalisation that we have suffered”.

There it is again. They want to be free to bully her and they want her to shut up and take it. They haven’t suffered any “marginalisation.”

Kay said the event on 28 August was supposed to be a bonding dinner for a dance company about to perform Romeo and Juliet. She explained she had wanted to invite dancers round ahead of the show’s opening, after the long months of the pandemic had lowered spirits.

“We’d had no social time because of Covid,” she told the BBC. “I cooked, put candles in the garden, and made a lot of effort as I wanted them to enjoy themselves.”

The dancers see it differently. They told the BBC that she was their boss, in a position of authority, which they felt made it an “unequal situation” from the start. “It was a work environment… she abused her position of power,” one company member said.

By not letting them tell her what to think.

The letter, signed by six members of the company, added: “Rosie spoke about ‘the cake of rights’ and stated women have fought for their slice of rights and now men pretending to be women want a portion of that slice. This is a deeply offensive analogy and due to the fact that two trans non-binary people had a seat at the table, it felt very pointed.”

But however offensive it is, it’s true. Trans “activism” has become all about taking more and more rights away from women. You could change “pretending to be” to “identifying as” to be more tactful, but the taking of rights is all too real. What the board of Rosie Kay’s company did to her is an all too clear example of that circular diminution: if you say out loud that trans dogma is eroding women’s rights then you will be punished, which proves your point.

New Zealand passes a law making it easier to carry fake proof of identity.

Parliament has unanimously passed a sex self-identification law which will make it easier to amend a person’s sex on their birth certificates.

…

Once law, it will mean transgender, intersex, gender diverse, and takatāpui people will no longer need proof of medical treatment or a Family Court declaration to change the sex listed on their birth certificate, but instead apply for it to be changed on the basis of how they identify.

“Today is a day about inclusion–having the right to have a birth certificate that reflects who you know yourself to be,” Internal Affairs Minister Jan Tinetti said, during the third reading of the bill in the House.

Except of course that’s not what birth certificates are for. They’re not about “who you know yourself to be” but who you are in fact, as a matter of record. We all no doubt know ourselves to be perfected beings, beautiful as the dawn, swift as a cheetah, clever as a MacArthur Fellow, wise as Baby Jesus, but birth certificates are about a few dull literal facts. Sex is one of those facts.

“This bill has had some controversy. It’s been a tough journey for our trans- and non-binary community … there have been real people who have been hurt when they have been belittled, mocked, or discriminated against,” Tinetti said.

“A lot of the discussion has been aimed at our transwomen, who, as a cisgender woman, I am proud to stand alongside and call my sisters.”

There’s a reason for that. The reason is that transwomen are men, and their pretending to be women does harm to actual women, and some people actually think that women matter. Weird, I know.

The bill was strongly opposed by groups concerned it would damage women’s rights and protections, and became a lightning rod for culture wars issues.

But sod them, right? Sod women and sod their rights and protections.

H/t Rob

The administration strongly advises them to keep their filthy slutty bitchy greedy mouths shut or else.

Even after a Wednesday team meeting where a source says Penn administration “strongly advised” its swimmers to avoid talking to the media about the situation surrounding transgender Penn swimmer Lia Thomas, a second female Penn swimmer has stepped forward to speak out via an exclusive interview with OutKick.

Now why would the administration lean on them to shut up about it? The administration would doubtless say “Because transphobia!!” but that’s just virtuespeak for “Because we know how this looks.” The administration doesn’t want the cheated swimmers to tell the media how angry and frustrated they are about being cheated.

The second female Penn swimmer to speak out, who was granted anonymity due to what is viewed as threats from the university, activists, and the political climate, wants people to know that Penn swimmers are “angry” over the lack of fairness in the sport as Lia Thomas destroys the record books and brings fellow teammates to tears.

The second Penn swimmer to come forward was at the University of Akron Zippy Invitational where she watched Lia Thomas beat fellow teammate Anna Kalandadze by 38 seconds in the 1650 freestyle. OutKick’s source described Penn swimmers on the Akron pool deck as upset and crying, knowing they were going to be demolished by Thomas.

They weren’t happy for him? They weren’t rejoicing that he gets to live his dream?

After just five meets and the Akron Invitational, Thomas has not just destroyed opponents. The Penn freestyle records are being rewritten by a swimmer who was second-team All-Ivy league in 2018-19 — as a male.

Akron was an absolute beatdown by Thomas, but it wasn’t without disgust from fans who were in the building watching meet, pool, and school records drop one after the other.

“Usually everyone claps, everyone is yelling and cheering when someone wins a race. Lia touched the wall and it was just silent in there,” OutKick’s source said during a phone interview.

Some people still recognize cheating when they see it.

According to OutKick’s source, Thomas was unhappy with her time after the 500 race, but while standing in front of teammates, made sure to mention, “At least I’m still No. 1 in the country.”

“Well, obviously she’s No. 1 in the country because she’s at a clear physical advantage after having gone through male puberty and getting to train with testosterone for years,” OutKick’s source said. “Of course you’re No. 1 in the country when you’re beating a bunch of females. That’s not something to brag about.”

He’s at a clear physical advantage.

A team source who was at Wednesday’s meeting says the administration drew a line in the sand and announced that Thomas wasn’t going anywhere and it was non-negotiable.

Despite the obvious, glaring, shameful unfairness of it. Take a bow, Penn.

After years of battling for Title IX and equal rights with men in college athletics, the biological women are pretty much being told to shut their mouths and move along by the school and the NCAA.

…

During an interview published Thursday by swimming outlet SwimSwam.com, Thomas spoke out for the first time since destroying pool records and said, “I’m just thrilled to still be able to swim and I love to compete and I love to see how fast I can go. It’s sorta an ongoing evolution of what I think I can go.”

As for the records Thomas now holds, he doesn’t seem to have any regret in smashing biological female swimming marks.

“I’m proud of my times, my ability to keep swimming and to continue competing. And they’re suited up times. I’m happy with them and my coaches are happy with them,” Thomas added.

And that was that from Thomas. No shame. No mention of not claiming the records so that they can remain the property of biological women. Thomas is moving on — with the records.

No shame; smug bragging instead.

As Anna reminds us, Weimar Germany did have a sexuality institute which the Nazis did destroy. Wikipedia:

The Institut für Sexualwissenschaft was an early private sexology research institute in Germany from 1919 to 1933. The name is variously translated as Institute of Sex Research, Institute of Sexology, Institute for Sexology or Institute for the Science of Sexuality. The Institute was a non-profit foundation situated in Tiergarten, Berlin. It was headed by Magnus Hirschfeld, who since 1897 had run the Wissenschaftlich-humanitäres Komitee (‘Scientific-Humanitarian Committee’), which campaigned on progressive and rational grounds for LGBT rights and tolerance.

But it didn’t call it that, one because that’s not German and two because there was no such label then. “LGBT rights” is a contemporary shorthand; it doesn’t pre-date the Nazis.

The Nazi book burnings in Berlin included the archives of the Institute. After the Nazis gained control of Germany in the 1930s, the institute and its libraries were destroyed as part of a Nazi government censorship program by youth brigades, who burned its books and documents in the street.

The Nazis were very keen on keeping men Manly and women Womanly. They weren’t what you’d call subtle thinkers.

At the institute, Magnus Hirschfeld championed the doctrine of sexual intermediacy. This proposed form of classification said that every human trait existed on a scale from masculine to feminine. Masculine traits were characterized as dominant and active while feminine traits were passive and perceptive. The classification was further divided into the subgroups of sex organs, physical characteristics, sex drive or sexuality, and psychological characteristics. Hirschfeld’s belief was that all human beings possess both masculine and feminine traits regardless of their sex. In fact, he believed that no one was fully masculine or fully feminine but rather a blend of the two.

So then why call them “feminine” and “masculine” at all? If we all have some of each why not come up with some less confusing way to talk about the subject?

A man with a female sex drive, for example, would be homosexual, whereas someone with male sex organs and mostly female psychological characteristics would likely be transgender.^[7]

A man with a female sex drive would be homosexual? I don’t think that’s right. I think they mean orientation or attraction, not drive.

At any rate, it existed and the Nazis did trash it but it wasn’t the loving parent of today’s ideologues.

It’s in the Daily Mail. Maybe that’s because knowing that men are not women is a loathsome far-right opinion – or maybe it’s because journalism to the left of the Daily Mail has lost its fucking mind.

UPenn trans swimmer Lia Thomas broke her silence on Thursday in response to the widespread outrage over her smashing women’s swim records and praised the controversial IOC rules for transgender athletes.

He’s lost muscle, he’s lost strength – but he still has more than women so hahaha bitches. He says it’s totally fair.

An anonymous female swimmer at UPenn gave an explosive interview to sports website OutKick on Thursday expressing her fury and frustration, and how she and most of her female teammates are upset because their coach, Mike Schnur, is allowing a transgender athlete to take a woman’s spot because he ‘just really likes winning.’

He likes it so much he’s happy to let Thomas cheat. How very sporting.

In a reversal of the IOC’s previous stance, the new guidelines, set to be rolled out after the Beijing Winter Olympics this year, say that there should be no presumption that trans women have an automatic advantage over other women.

Despite the fact that they do have a built-in anatomical advantage, or rather multiple advantages. It’s not a “presumption,” it’s thoroughly documented.

[Thomas] also noted her teammates as a continued support system through her transition and the national criticism she has since faced.

‘The team has been unbelievably supportive since the beginning, you know, teammates and coaches….I feel very supported. Just treated like any other member of the women’s team,’ she said.

But the unidentified female swimmer told OutKick that support is ‘fake.’

‘When the whole team is together, we have to be like, “Oh my gosh, go Lia, that’s great, you’re amazing.“ It’s very fake,’ she said.

‘Pretty much everyone individually has spoken to our coaches about not liking this,’ the anonymous Ivy League athlete told Outkick. ‘Our coach just really likes winning. He’s like most coaches. I think secretly everyone just knows it’s the wrong thing to do.’

But ssshhh it’s a secret.

latsot alerts us to a useful Twitter thread.

There are no images or other toys so I’ll just quote the rest of it.

Firstly, I’d need to know that there was actually research being done on the effects of the policy, particularly wrt those most likely to be affected by the loss of sex as a clearly defined category (women, gay people, anyone affected by safeguarding procedures).

I’d need to know it was somehow possible to gather and analyse these data reliably, despite the confusion between sex and gender. I’d want to see the data tracking patterns over a long time period to monitor societal changes.

I’d want to see that there hadn’t been an increase in crime against women. I’d want evidence that women were not self-excluding from situations that they would have accessed on a single-sex basis. I’d want to know that there was no reduction in the services that women need, and that women were still willing to access them.

I’d want to know that women’s chances in sport had not been affected. I’d want to know that religious women hadn’t suffered due to loss of single-sex spaces.

I’d want to know that safeguarding procedures were still robust, that children still had rights to single-sex facilities, that people could still request, and access, a health or care provider of their own sex when it was important to them.

I’d want to know that demographic data was still sound, that service planning hadn’t been negatively impacted. I’d want to track any effect on the pay gap and on women’s employment. I’d want to know there were no human rights abuses (such as mixed-sex prisons).

I’d want to know if the policy made things better, worse, or unchanged for the most vulnerable in society. That’s just off the top of my (non-expert) head. What have I got wrong? What have I missed?

There’s all that, but there’s also just the fundamental ground-level fact that truth matters. There are some categories a human can identify into or out of, and there are others where that makes no sense. We need things to make sense. People can play and dream and imagine and fantasize that they are birds or planets or trees or the other sex all day long, but they can’t impose their fantasies on the rest of us. That may seem boring and confining but is it really? It seems to me that privacy is good for fantasy – more free, less beholden to anyone else. Anyway whether it is or not, we all have the right to remain non-complicit in anyone else’s fantasy.

India Willoughby is appropriating the Nazi persecution of lesbian and gay people to himself.

The Nazis made gay men wear pink triangles.

There was no such thing as an “LGBTQ” library in Nazi Germany. The category did not exist. India doesn’t call himself a gay man, he calls himself a woman.

Didn’t happen.

Ah yes people who object to men stealing sporting wins from women are “nasty” and to be shrugged off. Shrug shrug shruggity shrug, bitches. The Daily Beast:

A trans university swimmer attacked by right-wing media for smashing records in her first meet as a woman says she expected some “pushback” but has chosen not to “engage” in the nasty online debate.

The scare-quotes should be on “as a woman” not “engage.” There’s no such thing as “as a woman.” If you’re not a woman then you’re not a woman; you don’t get to take women’s stuff by saying you’re doing it “as a woman.”

Over the weekend, Lia Thomas—now a member of the University of Pennsylvania women’s swim team after three years on the men’s team—smashed multiple swimming records at the Zippy Invitational in Ohio…

Yes quite, after three years on the men’s team, because he’s a man, with a man’s build and a man’s strength. “She” set records, the Daily Beast drools. Yes of course he did, because he competed against women.

The New York Post Editorial Board slammed Thomas in an essay on Thursday, calling the swimmer “selfish” for competing among women. 

And what do you call it, Brooke Leigh Howard of the Daily Beast? Not selfish? Not a shameless punch in the face to all the women in those races?

Thomas, though, in an interview with the SwimSwam Podcast, said that the guidelines from the International Olympic Committee for intersex and trans athletes are fair, with rules that are inclusive and “promote competition integrity” while allowing athletes to compete in whatever category makes them comfortable.

Well he would, wouldn’t he. Thomas says it’s ok for him to cheat – of course he says that, so that he can go on cheating. And the categories are not there to make men “comfortable” competing against women.

Oh yes, completely fair, nothing to dispute here.

Being male is a proven unfair advantage in competing against women.

I daresay “Lia” Thomas would see the point if one or two or six other men decided they were most comfortable competing against him and the dwindling number of women who got that far.

Another target.

She’s not wrong though.

Matt Gaetz and Steve Bannon tell us up front that they plan to take over the country.

Former White House adviser Steve Bannon and GOP Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida want some “4,000 shock troops” to get ready to take control of the federal government if Donald Trump decides to run for president again and wins in 2024.

…

During a segment of Bannon’s War Room podcast on Thursday, he and Gaetz discussed a pro-Trump strategy to take full control of the government should the former president win in 2024.

Gaetz said that “sometimes you’ve got to raise your voice to raise a ruckus and to raise an army of patriots who love this country and will fight for her.” He said the pro-Trump movement is “going to operationalize the performance to go right after the people who are imposing the vaccine mandates, who are enriching themselves and who are selling out the country.”

…

“This is Trumpism in power. That’s when we went to the 4,000 shock troops we have to have that’s going to man the government,” Bannon predicted. “Get them ready now. Right? We’re going to hit the beach with the landing teams and the beachhead teams and all that nomenclature they use when President Trump wins in 2024—or before.”

…

“We’re going to have a sweeping victory in 2022, and that’s just the preamble to a sweeping victory in 2024, and this time we’re going to be ready—and have a MAGA perspective, MAGA policies, not the standard Republican policies,” he said in early October.

“If you’re going to take over the administrative state and deconstruct it, then you have to have shock troops prepared to take it over immediately,” he added.

On the one hand talk is cheap, on the other hand it could easily happen and Bannon would be right there cheering it on.

Newsweek says Trump seems likely to run. I say yes but his head could explode at any time. He’s not what anyone would call in good shape, and he has tantrums all the time. That head is a ticking bomb. I have high hopes.

Originally a comment by Rob on The motives.

When you’re part of a dominant culture, as I am, and I suspect most of us here, it’s always more comfortable to keep things much as they are. Sure let in some ‘ethnics’. It gives us great choice in restaurants after all, but at the same time we don’t want to deal with different language, religions, restrictions on marriage or schooling. Sometimes for good reason perhaps, sometimes not.

But western centrist governments have all wanted to promote some flavour of globalism, particularly with respect to free or low barrier trade. Ask most economists and they’ll tell you there is no truly free trade without free migration. Labour is a resource, and for a free market to flourish, that resource has to be able to follow demand. Most developed countries don’t want that of course. Partly through outright racism, partly because we’ve got it very comfortable thank you. Competing against migrants hungry for a better life and willing to work for it isn’t appealing. We also don’t like to be reminded that part of the reason so many people want to come to the west is because we’ve spent most of the last few hundred years fucking over their countries to enrich ours. Roost, meet chicken.

Migrants or refugees?

The home secretary, Priti Patel, has said she will ask the BBC and other media to reflect on their language after the term “migrant” was used to describe people who drowned in the Channel.

It’s considered dehumanizing.

The home secretary has most recently adopted the term “economic migrants”, a label favoured by the likes of the hard-right campaigner Nigel Farage but seen by charities as an attempt to undermine the motives of those who risk their lives to cross from France.

In other words as saying they’re not fleeing persecution but seeking better conditions.

But that raises the question of why the second is frowned on. Better conditions are better, so yes people are going to try to get to them. Why wouldn’t they?

[Patel] has claimed that 70% of people who come to the UK via small boats are “single men who are effectively economic migrants” and “not genuine asylum seekers”.

The trumpies say that kind of thing too, but…yes, and? “Economic” here stands for better pay and a better life. People move to a different town or county or region for that, so some are going to try to move to a different country. There are borders and rules and barriers, but that doesn’t make the desire for better pay and a better life contemptible.

In 2015 David Cameron as prime minister was heavily criticised for speaking of a “swarm of people coming across the Mediterranean”. He later defended his use of the term “swarm” and said he was determined to keep out people living in the Calais camps as they attempted to reach Britain, likening some of them to burglars. “They are economic migrants and they want to enter Britain illegally and the British people and I want to make sure our borders are secure and you can’t break into Britain without permission,” he said.

David Cameron has had a pretty comfortable life, I believe.

I get so tired of the mockery.

A transgender swimmer on the University of Pennsylvania women’s team continued to smash records in the pool over the weekend.

Yes haha very funny. Of course a man continued to smash records set by women. Quit rubbing our noses in it.

Lia Thomas won the 200-yard freestyle in 1:41.93 at the Zippy Invitational in Akron, Ohio, on Saturday to break the school’s all-time mark and establish the best time in the nation this season, according to the university. On Sunday, she won the 1,650 freestyle by more than 38 seconds in 15:59.71 to set another university record.

Yes, because he’s a man, doing what’s known as “cheating.”

In a previous meet against Ivy League rivals Princeton and Cornell, Thomas won the 500 free in what was the best collegiate time (a Princeton record 4:35.06) so far, in addition to capturing the 100 and 200.

Blah blah blah. In other news, an elephant can carry more than a sparrow can.

Thomas, from Austin, Texas, could become NCAA Division 1 swimming’s first transgender All-American or national champion, Outsports reported. The championships are in March in Atlanta, and Thomas has established herself as a strong contender.

No, he’s established himself as a determined cheater. He’s not any kind of “contender.”

Swimming is “a huge part of my life and who I am. I’ve been a swimmer since I was 5 years old,” she told Penn Today in June. “The process of coming out as being trans and continuing to swim was a lot of uncertainty and unknown around an area that’s usually really solid. Realizing I was trans threw that into question. Was I going to keep swimming? What did that look like?”

It looks like shameless cheating, that’s what it looks like. As he knows damn well. None of this is hidden or obscure.

Thomas, who’s competing as a senior after the Ivy League canceled the previous season due to the pandemic, added: “Being trans has not affected my ability to do this sport and being able to continue is very rewarding.”

Yes it has. It has affected your ability to cheat by competing against women when you have a male body.

Like…what?

Like Hitler? How?

Ah he explains.

It’s weird to put your own lie in scare quotes. It’s a grotesque and dangerous lie to say that Kathleen Stock backs the elimination of trans people – and it doesn’t become less of a lie when you put it in scare quotes. She backs no such thing. The word “elimination” of people means extermination, while Stock is talking about concepts and definitions and self-descriptions.

The tweet immediately before that lying one is all about the womany.

You can tell instantly that he’s a woman! Because bent knee! Men’s knees don’t bend! Only women can do that insinuating coaxing little me bend of the knee, therefore Willoughby must be one.

Another heretic for the pyre:

Choreographer Rosie Kay has never shied away from controversial subjects. Her ballet MK Ultra addressed conspiracy theorists; her award-winning 5 Soldiers, inspired by the weeks she spent embedded with an infantry regiment, tackled war. And on Tuesday Kay resigned from the dance company that bears her name, forced out by her belief that biological sex is immutable.

Such a cranky “belief,” isn’t it. It’s like the “belief” that animals are born and die.

What led to Kay, 45, abandoning her life’s work was an argument at a party she held for young dancers at her home. Telling them that her next ballet was based on Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, a male aristocrat who morphs into a woman, she added: “Woolf knows anyone can change sex in their imagination but that you can’t change sex in your actual body.”

Dancers complained to her board of trustees and now, four months later, having only just seen allegations she totally denies, Kay has lost access to her company’s bank account, social media and email address. She quit her company because she believes a proposed tribunal, run by an external HR consultant, would not rule in her favour.

“My lawyer advised me, ‘You are not going to win. They will find you guilty of transphobia, smear you — and that’s the end of your career.’ But I was just talking about women’s material reality and I am not going to go quietly. I am determined to put my head above the parapet.”

What an insult it is that we have to put our heads above the parapet.

Read the whole thing.

So Catholics think they have a monopoly on organ music? They think they get to dictate who can and can’t compose and play organ music? Why would that be the case? Who has the authority to make it the case? What’s next, we have to seek permission from religious fanatics to play any instrument at all, and to sing, and to hum under our breath?

After Catholic fundamentalists prevented Swedish musician Anna von Hausswolff from performing in a church in Nantes on Tuesday, the Paris church Saint-Eustache has cancelled her planned 9 December concert, citing concerns over security.

On Tuesday, a group described by Nantes’ deputy mayor, Bassem Asseh, as “intolerant radicals” blocked the entrance to the church Notre-Dame de Bon-Port ahead of von Hausswolff’s show, accusing her of making “satanist” music, despite the show being organised in accordance with the Nantes diocese.

Why didn’t the police remove the bossy censors from the entrance?

Von Hausswolff’s primary instrument is the pipe organ, largely found in places of worship. British music publication the Quietus described the Swedish Grammy nominee’s music as exploring “unmapped territory where post-rock, prog, doom metal, modern classical and high church music all coexist in uneasy alliance”. Her lyrics have touched on gothic themes.

And she doesn’t need anyone’s permission for any of that.

“Yesterday night the far-right Catholic integralism won over art, but not over love,” Von Hausswolff wrote on Instagram, alongside a photograph of herself sitting in the empty church “while listening to about 50-100 integralists chanting and screaming outside the church’s doors, blocking the way for almost 400 people”.

She said it was tense and scary and that they had no choice about canceling because they didn’t have security. Who knew organ music required security?