Scottish Human Rights Blog at Amnesty International UK assured us a couple of weeks ago that men taking everything that belongs to women is fine fine fine not a problem at all.

Women’s and human rights organisations in Scotland, including Amnesty, have written to the UN Special Rapporteur for Violence Against Women and Girls restating their support for Scotland’s Gender Recognition Reform Bill.

The organisations – many of whom provide services for women and girls – wrote to Ms Alsalem detailing why they do not share concerns she expressed about the Bill. 

To refresh our memories on those concerns she shared last month:

The Scottish government’s proposals to reform gender recognition laws could allow violent males to “abuse” the system, a UN expert claims.

The organisation’s special rapporteur on violence against women and girls said the legislation could increase potential safety risks.

But Amnesty and an unspecified number of other “women’s and human rights organisations” are confident enough to reply that no it could not increase potential safety risks. That’s a lot of confidence, to deny even the possibility.

In the letter they state:

“We see the paths to equality and the realisation of human rights for women and trans people as being deeply interconnected and dependant on shared efforts to dismantle systems of discrimination.”

Why? Why do they see them that way? That’s a stupid way to see them. Women and “trans people” have very different needs and demands. Bundling them is a crude and dumb mistake.

But oh well, Amnesty Scotland is down with the kids.

Oh the joys of privatization.

Dozens of people have been evacuated from their flooded homes and thousands have been left without water after two water mains burst in north London.

And not just any North London.

About 60 firefighters were called to Belsize Road in Camden at about 02:50 GMT when homes were deluged with about 50cm (1.6ft) of water.

Belsize Road in Camden=Belsize Road in Hampstead, one of the very poshest and most desirable areas of London.

London Fire Brigade (LFB) said 24 people were led to safety and a hub was set up at Swiss Cottage Library.

Thames Water apologised after multiple postcodes were left without water.

The bitter joke is Thames Water is private, aka a profit-making corporation. It was part of Thatcher’s wave of privatization that also ruined London Transport. I’m seeing many bitter tweets about the huge profits Thames Water made last year at the expense of little things like checking the god damn water mains.

Originally a comment by Holms at Miscellany Room.

Connecticut rule allowing transgender athletes in girls’ school sports upheld

The usual lie is packaged in the article heading – the issue is male athletes in girls’ sports. Par for the course.

A federal appeals court on Friday upheld the dismissal of a lawsuit that challenged a Connecticut policy allowing transgender students to compete in girls’ high school sports.

The New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected claims by four cisgender female students that the policy deprived them of wins and athletic opportunities by requiring them to compete with two transgender sprinters.

They had sued the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference (CIAC), which oversees scholastic sports in Connecticut, saying its policy violated Title IX, a law designed to create equal opportunities for women in education and athletics.

I’ll take correction from a lawyer, but the argument that a right has been breached seems strange to me. As we’ve said in response to Veronica Ivy’s claim ‘access to sports is a right’, no, at least not as an individually stated thing. This seems to me more like a breach of promise undertaken by the athletics association of that (and other) states, as they fail to provide a fair competition despite claiming so.

I suspect this different framing makes the burden on the moving party lighter, as breach of rights often requires stringent judicial tests.

I also take issue with the reasoning supplied in the verdict:

But U.S. Circuit Judge Denny Chin, writing for a three-judge panel, said that far from being deprived of a “chance to be champions,” the four plaintiffs all regularly competed in state track championships and on numerous occasions came in first.

This is an argument with diminishing returns. It is only true so long as there are other competitions in which female participants can find a fair field, meaning the argument cannot be applied to every competition available – once the last competition succumbs, the premise of the argument – that there are other avenues available to women – is no longer true. And if an argument cannot be applied generally, then it seems it is not generally valid but relies on externalities to mitigate the impact its own successes.

Why do women keep banging on about misogyny, eh? I just can’t figure it out.

I don’t have a settled opinion about Meghan Markle. There are too many conflicting accounts, and I’m not interested enough to delve into them all. But I very definitely do have a settled opinion about men writing in widely-read newspapers about wanting to see a particular woman dragged naked through the streets while people throw shit at her. Yes I do indeed. In fact his writing this has helped me out a good deal with the conflicting accounts: if people think stuff like this about her, and the Sun is happy to publish it, then maybe she and Harry haven’t been exaggerating all that much.

This is related to that thing I was saying the other day about gut-level fear around angry men. If this is how they talk about us in public…yeah that’s scary shit.

“Activism” in Brussels:

A mysterious “Ursula collective” violently tried to prevent the holding of a conference by Céline Masson and Caroline Eliacheff on the excesses of the trans movement, at the Café Laïque in Brussels.

It’s a machine translation so excuse the stiltedness. Café Laïque=Secular Café.

The subject was appropriate: while two French speakers were invited Thursday evening to the Café Laïque in Brussels to discuss the ” excesses of the transgender movement “, around twenty young activists came to walk the talk and concretely illustrate the intolerance that is sometimes blamed on their cause.

And in came some men to throw shit at women. How illustrative.

The associative café received child psychiatrist Caroline Eliacheff and Professor Céline Masson about their latest essay, La Fabrique de l’enfant transgenre (Observatory editions) which warns about the psychological conditioning of minors confronted with the obsession of certain caregivers around “gender dysphoria”. A commitment that earned them to be regularly taken to task by activists of the transgender movement, for whom the two French intellectuals are “transphobic“. 

The organizers were told to cancel the event or face consequences.

After half an hour of conference, and taking advantage of the fact that the door of the establishment, locked as a precaution, was reopened by a person out to telephone in the street, they signaled to about twenty individuals hooded men who violently engulfed themselves in the cafe. The small group of activists then threw terracotta pots containing litter and excrement at the public, which numbered around twenty-five people, while shouting slogans hostile to the association “The Little Mermaid”, founded by Céline Masson and Caroline Eliacheff.

Men throwing shit at women. Plus ça change eh?

“After the throwing of fecal matter, they overturned the chairs, jostled everyone and tried to approach the back of the room, before people intervened to prevent them from attacking the speakers”, Florence Bergeaud-Blackler tells Le Figaro, who says she is “shocked” by this unprecedented attack against her associative establishment.

They’re always the ones engaging in violence – jostling, shoving, throwing, grabbing, punching, kicking, smashing, ripping, stomping. Wouldn’t you think eventually they would notice the pattern and wonder if they’re really the good guys here?

Oh. my. god. It’s an actual video. He did an actual video to peddle it.

The CRINGE.

The Beeb tells us:

A top UN official has backed the Scottish government’s plan to reform gender recognition laws. Ministers want to make it easier for trans people to change their gender.

The UN high commissioner for human rights said the Scottish bill is a “significant step forward”.

For women it’s a disastrous leap backward. UN high commissioner for human rights doesn’t care. Women don’t matter.

Last month, a UN special rapporteur on violence against women and girls, warned the Scottish bill could endanger women.

Because of course it could, but way too many people are determined to pretend otherwise.

Reem Alsalem said it “would potentially open the door for violent males who identify as men to abuse the process of acquiring a gender certificate and the rights that are associated with it”.

This was disputed by a separate independent UN expert on gender identity, who said the legislation would bring Scotland in line with international human right standards.

But saying the legislation would bring Scotland in line with international human right standards has nothing to do with whether or not easy gender certificates will open the door for violent males. Those are two separate claims.

SNP MP and lawyer Joanna Cherry challenged claims the legislation would bring Scotland into line with international human rights standards.

Ms Cherry, who has been critical of the Scottish government’s plans, argued self-identification was not required to comply with international human rights standards.

Responding to Mr Madrigal-Borloz, she tweeted: “This ‘legal opinion’ contains no analysis of the potential conflict between the proposed system of self-identification and the Equality Act and, in particular, of how self-ID could undermine the sex based rights of women & same sex attracted people.”

All it contains is blithe indifference to the needs and rights of female people.

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has said that some people have “genuinely held concerns” about the plans but argued that others have latched onto the issue to spread transphobia.

Does she have a divining rod to tell which is which?

Where too much inclooosion can take you:

A western Sydney woman who thought she was messaging an underage girl about being a transgender person with “boobs and a c–k”, but was actually messaging undercover police, will remain behind bars.

Not a woman though. Even newspapers won’t tell the truth, even in a story about a man who tried to abuse a young girl.

Tianne Miller, 49, of Greystanes, appeared at Sydney Downing Centre District Court on Thursday after sending a series of sexually explicit messages to investigators in 2020 and 2021.

In July 2020, Child Exploitation Internet Unit detectives caught the widow sending sick messages on Chatiw and Facebook Messenger when she told an identity known as “41” she was 14 and how she intended to engage in sexual activity with her.

He. Mr Miller, age 49, did that.

Cops raided her house at Greystanes on August 14 where they seized an iPhone and laptop. Miller confessed to using Chatiw, sending the photos and that she was speaking to an underage people.

She was granted bail at Fairfield Court on August 15, 2021. The offending continued when she was on bail. The messages became more sick in October 2021 when Miller believed she was speaking with a 39-year-old woman who had a nine-year-old daughter.

He. He was granted bail, and he went right on doing the thing that got him arrested. Smart guy.

Miller told another online identity known as “46” that she could make her virginity “go away” after describing herself as a transgender/lesbian.

“As I’m transgender I have boobs and a c–k,’’ she said.

He said.

Judge Mark Marien said despite no actual victims being involved, it did not mitigate Miller’s offences, which had a “depraved nature”.

The court heard how her gender dysphoria sparked inner turmoil and made prison more onerous than other inmates. The woman, who was diagnosed with depression, also found it “jarring” when referred to as a man.

Diddums.

The court heard she had a traumatic incident in her childhood when her mother found her cross-dressing.

He. His childhood. Him cross-dressing.

Miller was sentenced to 5 ½ years in jail. She will be eligible for parole on July 16, 2024.

He. These aren’t our crimes.

Guest post by Jonathan A. Gallant

My adolescence, which went on for 50 years, was a difficult period.  I was afflicted by  perpetual dissatisfaction and  unease.   I could never seem to find myself, although I searched everywhere: in closets, in the refrigerator, under my bed, behind the the piano.   I had almost reached the age of retirement before I finally discovered the solution to my problem.  By then, the academic world was filled with news of individuals who claimed that they had been born in the wrong body.  When this news reached me, I had an epiphany: the wrong body issue was no doubt the source of my own difficulties, and thus it implied the solution. 

   The body that had been assigned to me at birth was not, I realized, the body I really ought to have.  What I felt like, and therefore the body I should have, was that of a direct descendent of Dmitri Ivanovich, the lost son of Tsar Ivan IV, also known as Ivan the Terrible.  It follows that I should be, and therefore am, on the direct line of the Terrible dynasty, and thus I am a proper claimant to the imperial throne of the Russian Empire. 

  My chosen personal pronoun is его императорское величество, Russian for “his imperial majesty”.  In direct communication, I must always be addressed in its second person (plural) form, which is: Ваше императорское величество .
I trust that this story will be illuminating in regard to the burning issue of Pronouns.

   Ivan V, Царь Всея Руси    (formerly Jon Gallant)

And the Times:

The advert says the job, with a salary of £110,000 to £115,000, will involve “amplifying the voice of those using services” within the hospital and “facilitating cultural changes”.

Whoever gets the six-figure job will be responsible for ensuring patients’ experiences and stories are heard at board level by bosses at the NHS trust, based in Stafford.

Well that at least sounds potentially useful (although it’s not clear why existing staff can’t do that) but it sure as hell doesn’t clarify why it’s worth four times as much salary as the actual medical people get. It’s a communications job, a management job, a connect the pieces job – it’s not stopping climate change.

The new role will also involve creating “brave spaces” for patients to give feedback on their treatment and “brokering psychologically safe environments” in the hospital.

The job title should be Executive Touchyfeely Officer.

Ewan Somerville at the Telegraph is on the Lived Experience story.

The NHS has hired an army of “lived experience” tsars on salaries of up to £115,000, despite ministers vowing a war on waste.

An army – so this recruitment ad we saw is just one of many.

Midlands Partnership NHS Foundation Trust (MPFT) is recruiting a “director for lived experience” who must have experiences of “a life altering health condition” and “significant power imbalances” in their use of health services.

The tsar will “ensure brave spaces” for people to give feedback and be based at St George’s Hospital, in Stafford, on a salary of £110,000-115,000 per year – four times that of a newly qualified nurse or junior doctor.

Why? Why pay four times more for “lived experience” than for arduous training and education? Why value “lived experience” boffins four times more than doctors and nurses?

The trust claims it is the first such board-level position in the health service, but The Telegraph has identified at least 20 “lived experience” job titles across seven NHS trusts, being paid a total of at least £600,000.

It really is bizarre. Sarcasm and bitter jokes aside, what is this? What does explain the enormous difference in compensation?

In January, Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys NHS Foundation Trust recruited two lived experience directors to “disrupt conventional thinking”, designed to “enthuse, inspire, train and support diverse communities and seldom heard voices to keep co-creation at its core”.

Why is that four times more important than actual medical care?

UN official says what?

Who he is according to his Twitter profile:

He/him. UN Independent Expert on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity & Eleanor Roosevelt Senior Visiting Researcher and Lecturer on Law, Harvard Law School

What kind of “expert” on genner idennniny? What kind can there be? Like experts on the Koran or the Talmud or the Gospels are they? Experts on fictions, fantasies, inherited beliefs?

Anyway, it’s grim to see the UN signing up to the ideology.

Even funnier than the Director for Lived Experience – Trump with muscles:

Former US President Donald Trump has launched a collection of digital trading cards depicting him in various guises including a superhero, astronaut and Nascar driver.

There’s just one problem. He’s fat, and lazy, and clumsy, and a chickenshit. I suppose you could say those are four problems but I think it’s more efficient to bundle them into one “He’s not that guy.” He doesn’t stomp around in pseudo-military pants shooting ducks, and he doesn’t have that muscle definition under his business suit. He talks endlessly and stupidly, and he throws catsup at walls: that’s it, that’s the extent of his superpowerhood.

Mr Trump said: “These limited edition cards feature amazing ART of my Life & Career!”

Art. Sure, bro, right up there with Rembrandt and Vermeer.

Last month, the billionaire launched his third bid for the White House.

He triggered speculation this week after saying he would make a “major announcement”.

Some gullible people thought he was going to announce a running mate.

Instead, Mr Trump posted a promotional video on his social media platform, Truth Social.

The clip featured an animated version of the former president in front of the Trump Tower in New York, who rips open his shirt to reveal a superhero costume emblazoned with the letter T as lasers shoot from his eyes.

This is a grown man, not a five-year-old. A grown man who once had some frightening responsibilities. Let’s not ever do that again.

Later on Truth Social Mr Trump said the non-fungible tokens (NFTs) were “very much like a baseball card, but hopefully much more exciting”. He added that the cards, costing $99 (£81) each, “would make a great Christmas gift”.

Buyers will also be entered into a sweepstake, with the chance of winning prizes including a gala dinner or a game of golf with Mr Trump.

Those are prizes?

Speaking of vital information on Twitter…how can this possibly be real as opposed to a joke?

Job overview

We are seeking an interpersonally talented and strategic bridge-builder, to join our Trust board in the exciting new post of Director for Lived Experience.

How is that not a bit of script from The Office rather than a genuine situations vacant announcement from the NHS? What in hell is a director of lived experience??? Where are the grownups?

The post holder will be responsible for establishing and maintaining the highest levels of Lived Experience practice

What does that mean???

and amplifying the voice of those using services within decision-making at all levels of the organisation.

What does that mean???

UN and EU tell Elon Musk ok now you’re pissing us off:

The United Nations has joined the European Union in condemning Twitter’s decision to suspend some journalists who cover the social media firm.

Reporters for the New York Times, CNN and the Washington Post were among those locked out of their accounts.

The UN tweeted that media freedom is “not a toy” while the EU has threatened Twitter with sanctions.

This is the thing, you see: Twitter isn’t just an annoying social media item for kids, it’s also a de facto news outlet, and a quite significant one. That’s why I keep ignoring it when one of you reminds us that Twitter is dummm.

Melissa Fleming, the UN’s under secretary general for global communications, said she was “deeply disturbed” by reports that journalists were being “arbitrarily” suspended from Twitter. “Media freedom is not a toy,” she said. “A free press is the cornerstone of democratic societies and a key tool in the fight against harmful disinformation.”

Earlier on Friday, EU commissioner Vera Jourova threatened Twitter with sanctions under Europe’s new Digital Services Act which she said requires “the respect of media freedom and fundamental rights. Elon Musk should be aware of that. There are red lines. And sanctions, soon,” she added.

He’ll probably ban them all from Twitter.

Elon Musk is exercising his god-given bought and paid for right to kick prominent journalists off Twitter because they don’t kiss his ring.

The accounts suspended included Ryan Mac of The New York Times; Drew Harwell of The Washington Post; Aaron Rupar, an independent journalist; Donie O’Sullivan of CNN; Matt Binder of Mashable; Tony Webster, an independent journalist; Micah Lee of The Intercept; and the political journalist Keith Olbermann. It was unclear what the suspensions had in common; each user’s Twitter page included a message that said it suspended accounts that “violate the Twitter rules.”

The moves came a day after Twitter suspended more than 25 accounts that tracked the planes of government agencies, billionaires and high-profile individuals, including that of Mr. Musk. Many of the accounts were operated by Jack Sweeney, a 20-year-old college student and flight tracking enthusiast who had used Twitter to post updates about the location of Mr. Musk’s private plane using publicly available information.

I can see not allowing flight tracking, because that’s stalker behavior or worse, but some of the banished journalists were reporting on the tracker-banning; banning them doesn’t seem reasonable at all.

“Tonight’s suspension of the Twitter accounts of a number of prominent journalists, including The New York Times’s Ryan Mac, is questionable and unfortunate,” said Charlie Stadtlander, a spokesman for The Times. “Neither The Times nor Ryan have received any explanation about why this occurred. We hope that all of the journalists’ accounts are reinstated and that Twitter provides a satisfying explanation for this action.”

Also we’re getting a cascade effect now.

After his suspension from Twitter, Mr. Sweeney turned to Mastodon, an alternative social network. After Mastodon used Twitter to promote Mr. Sweeney’s new account on Thursday, Twitter suspended Mastodon’s account. As some journalists shared the news of Mastodon’s suspension, their own accounts were suspended.

Don’t mention the war!

Mr. Musk said in October that he would form a council to advise him on policy matters before making changes to the company’s content moderation policies. The council has not materialized. This week, Mr. Musk disbanded a trust and safety advisory group that had guided Twitter on thorny issues like harassment and child exploitation.

All good. Billionaires doing what they’re supposed to do.

Good news – but we’re still furious.

Here’s the story from last June:

The Norwegian Public Prosecution Service investigates “hate-mongering” tweets by feminist Christina Ellingsen, addressed to a man who claims to be a lesbian woman. If found guilty, Ellingsen could face up to three years in prison.

Ellingsen posted the tweets between February 2021 and January 2022, in reaction to statements of Christine Marie Jentoft, representative of the transactivist group Foreningen FRI. Jentoft is a biological man who identifies as a lesbian.

A (“biological”) man can’t be a lesbian. It’s all in the definition. Only women can be lesbians.

“Why does FRI teach young people that males can be lesbians? Isn’t that conversion therapy?” tweeted Ellingsen. Later, she wrote about how “bonkers” FRI is, an “organisation that supposedly works to protect the interests of young lesbians.”

Amnesty International Norway recently accused Ellingsen of “harassing” [Jentoft] after telling him on national television that he was male. “You are a man. You can’t be a mother,” said Ellingsen. “To normalize the idea that men can be mothers is a defined form of discrimination against women.”

Jentoft is harassing women.

In 2021, a Norwegian man was already convicted for “insulting” and “misgendering” a trans-identified man on Facebook. He was sentenced to 21 days in prison and a fine of approximately 1500 euros.

Can you imagine? I’d be dead of rage before the first day was over.

Giant brain on that Willz.

Is that right? So no films about the January 6 mob? No films about the Proud Boys? No films about incels? No films about abusers in police departments? No films about any set of people unless there are at least 4 billion of them?

Who made that rule? Why have there been no films about it?

Not that Willoughby has a stereotyped idea of what women are and do and like, no no no not at all, he understands women better than women do.

Spend some time with her doing the things girlz do teeheeheeheeheehee

Some deep breaths taken; back to Futrelle.

Rowling came up with the idea for Beira’s Place, she told anti-trans feminist Suzanne Moore, in what can only be described as a fit of pique caused by remarks from Mridul Wadhwa, the trans woman in charge of Edinburgh’s Rape Crisis centre.

Wadhwa had said that transphobic clients of the centre would have their bigotry challenged.

Futrelle simply assumes that the clients in question are “transphobic” and that their awareness that men are men is “bigotry” and thus he implies that Wadhwa was right and virtuous in promising to bully women who need rape crisis services for knowing that men are men.

Wadhwa also said it was possible to “reframe” one’s relationship with trauma so that “it becomes a story that empowers you and allows you to go and do other more beautiful things with your life.” As a result of these comments and the fact of her being a trans woman in the first place, the Edinburgh Rape Crisis centre endured a torrent of death threats and other abuse from transphobes that led to the centre having to lock itself down.

In other words Wadhwa was right and virtuous while the women who objected to his role at the centre and his outrageous entitlement in lecturing them were wrong and evil. Wadwha was an innocent benevolent victim of “abuse” from “transphobes” and that’s all there is to it.

Furious at Wadhwa’s comments, Rowling didn’t send any mean emails; she just decided to build a Rape Crisis centre that wouldn’t employ, or serve, Wadhwa’s kind.

That is, Rowling decided to fund a rape crisis centre for women.

So here she is, funding a service that avoids the “politics” of the sexual abuse of women by systematically excluding a whole class of victims.

Men are not a whole class of female victims. Men are not a whole class of victims of the sexual abuse of women. It’s only women who are female victims, women who are a whole class of victims of the sexual abuse of women.

The idea behind excluding trans victims is that cis women need a place to go where they feel safe. Never mind that there’s no evidence that trans women accessing support services would make cis women less safe. If feelings of safety are all that count, racist whites could make the same argument about a shelter needing to exclude women of color.

Trans women are men. Will men accessing support services for women make women less safe? I wonder why Futrelle doesn’t ask himself that question. (No I don’t. It’s all too obvious why he doesn’t.)

H/t Holms