This sounds weirdly familiar…

The 92-page report, “‘You Feel Like Your Life is Over’: Abusive Practices at Three Florida Immigration Detention Centers Since January 2025,” documents that people detained at Krome North Service Processing Center (Krome), Broward Transitional Center (BTC), and the Federal Detention Center (FDC) in Miami have been held in overcrowded and unsanitary conditions, subjected to degrading treatment, and have not been given access to prompt and adequate medical care…

…

Since President Donald Trump took office, his administration has driven forward a surge in immigration detention nationally, with ICE data showing that 45 out of 181 authorized detention facilities across the country exceeded their contractual capacity in mid-April.

The number of people detained by ICE in Florida has also surged, driven by federal and state policies that have expanded the scope of immigration enforcement. At Krome, the detained population more than tripled in the first three months of 2025, reaching nearly three times its operational capacity. FDC, a federal prison that in recent years had not been used for immigration detention, began holding hundreds of immigrants in February.

…

The researchers found that Krome detainees have been routinely held in freezing, overcrowded cells without bedding, denied access to hygiene, and subjected to prolonged and unjustifiable shackling during transportation. People detained at the three centers have been unable to get necessary medical care, including for chronic conditions such as diabetes, asthma, and HIV. Women have been held at Krome, a men’s detention facility, without access to gender-appropriate care or privacy. At least two deaths in custody—one at Krome and one at BTC—may have been linked to medical neglect.

…

In one particularly degrading incident, detainees at FDC were forced to eat while shackled with their hands behind their backs. “We had to bend over and eat off the chairs with our mouths, like dogs,” said Harpinder Chauhan, a British entrepreneur who had been detained by ICE at a regular immigration appointment. Chauhan, who suffers from diabetes and heart disease, said he was denied insulin at various points during his detention at Krome, FDC, and BTC, including at BTC for nearly a week, after which he collapsed and was taken to a hospital.

The researchers documented widespread overcrowding, with detainees held for days for “processing” in frigid conditions, sitting and sleeping on cold concrete floors in rooms designed to hold far fewer people for much shorter periods. One man described sleeping next to a toilet in a room so crowded that people had to step over each other to move. Another said he was denied access to soap or water for 20 consecutive days. At Krome after processing, some cells held more than double their intended capacity. 

What does that sound like? What does it remind us of?

We all know.

Trump is shouting at a football team to change its name back to the racist one they dropped. What a worthy cause!

Trump threatened on Sunday to interfere with a deal to build a new football stadium in Washington, D.C., unless the local NFL team, now known as the Commanders, changes its name back to Redskins.

Yeah fer sher, what right do they have to stop calling themselves “redskins” just because it’s a crude trashy insult?

The American football team dropped the name Redskins in 2020 after decades of criticism that it was a racial slur with links to the U.S. genocide of the Indigenous population.

But Mommmmmmm, Trump grew up watching movies about cowboys and redskins and he loves that old racist vibe.

Trump had called for a return to the name Redskins – and for the Cleveland Guardians baseball team to once again adopt the name Indians – on other occasions, but on Sunday he added that he may take official action.

“I may put a restriction on them that if they don’t change the name back to the original ‘Washington Redskins,’ and get rid of the ridiculous moniker, ‘Washington Commanders,’ I won’t make a deal for them to build a Stadium in Washington,” Trump said in a post on his Truth Social platform.

What’s ridiculous about Commanders? Apart from the fact that “Commander” is one of Trump’s titles of course.

Anyway it’s none of his business and he should go take a long walk on a short pier.

One or two further thoughts on the “what even is my own sex??” issue.

Isla Bumba, 29, is a senior “diversity officer” at NHS Fife. At an employment tribunal on Wednesday, she was questioned about her advice that a trans woman – that is, a biological male – should be allowed to use a hospital’s female changing room. And, during one extraordinary exchange, she told the tribunal that she doesn’t know what sex she is.

“I would hazard a guess that I would be female,” she said, with all solemnity. “But no one knows what their chromosomes are, or their hormonal composition, unless you’ve had that tested – and I at least have not.”

Wait. And then wait some more.

She would hazard a guess?

What, because she’s never known? Her whole life it’s been up in the air what sex she is? Really? Despite the female-coded hair and clothes? Despite having developed breasts? Despite menstruation? It’s just pure guesswork? It’s a guess she would have to hazard?

Did she never pick up cues in childhood that she was a girl, or that everyone around her considered her a girl? Has she been in uncertainty all 29 years of her life?

She can’t have literally thought she was just guessing, so why say it? Especially in court?

Well, because it’s the dogma. But then what makes the dogma so attractive that she says such a ridiculous thing? Why doesn’t the dogma repel her or make her laugh or both?

She doesn’t really think she’s hazarding a guess that she’s a woman. If she did she wouldn’t dress the way she does or wear her hair the way she does. If she did think that she would hedge her bets in public.

For the billionth time, I can’t make any sense of it. It’s not like campaigning against racism, or war, or xenophobia, or theocracy. It’s like campaigning against your own body, which seems a tad counter-productive.

There’s this one bit…

Asked about the reference to the Scottish prison story, she said: “It was in the media at the time. I was trying to give [Dr Upton] an example of how I and other women feel.”

Asked whether she treated Dr Upton with dignity and respect, Ms Peggie replied: “Yes, because Dr Upton’s presence there and the board’s decision to permit him to use a female-only changing room was unlawful.

“I felt upset, humiliated and harassed to find him there, particularly when I had a menstrual flood to deal with. I remained as calm as I could, but I felt strongly that he should not be there.”

His presence there was an ongoing thing, but on this particular occasion it was heightened for Peggie because she had bled through. See? Upton’s intrusions were a standing problem but that particular evening his presence was even more intrusive and disgusting because Peggie needed to change out of a bloody uniform. That’s not fun with anyone around, but a man? A higher status man? A taller huger higher status man? A fucking nightmare. And this piece of shit didn’t even have the basic empathy to realize that and get the hell out.

“His insistence that he was entitled to be there meant I felt I had no option but to try different explanations of why his presence made me and many of my colleagues uncomfortable.”

Think about that for a while. There she was, in that humiliating situation, asking him to go away, and he fucking refused. He paid zero attention to her humiliation and discomfort, and focused only on what he wanted – which was to stay in the room with her knowing she wanted him gone. He is a horrible human being. Selfish, ruthless, indifferent to everyone but himself.

The ideology does this to people. Everything else fades out and disappears, and all that’s left is Mai Idenninee. Other people’s wants and needs are so much dust, and only the Trans Person matters, at least if he’s a man.

Who in hell would ever want this guy as a doctor?

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Sobbing Upton.

For the moment, let’s set aside NHS Fife’s outrageous contempt for women’s safety that is the central issue of this proceeding. Maybe Upton deserves a little more attention and scrutiny, but not necessarily the kind he’s craving. Let’s pretend that Upton really was as upset as he claims, and as upset as is being claimed on his behalf. Let’s say his sobs weren’t artfully summoned crocodile tears. They don’t say anything good or healthy about him. Clearly his distress wasn’t a matter of his physical safety. Let’s look at the whole question of sex, class, status, and power that Ophelia has been emphasizing here, and his apparent shock at never having been spoken to like that in his entire life. If he’s actually that disturbed and distraught at having his delusional entitlement challenged, maybe he doesn’t have the emotional maturity and stability to be a doctor?

In his professional capacity, he’s supposed to be helping other people, as part of a team of health-care practitioners, not satisfying his own, selfish, fetishistic desires. If he can’t keep the latter out of the former, then perhaps medicine is not the field for him. Maybe both patients and colleagues deserve someone more devoted to the job they’re supposed to be doing, than they are to pleasuring themselves. Maybe NHS Fife should be more invested in protecting their female nursing staff and less in enabling Upton’s kink. Because enabling is what they’re doing if they’re defending and enforcing his “right” to go out of his way, bypassing a more conveniently located changing room, in order to use a space for female nurses, that is never used by female doctors. Without the excuse of a trans “identity”, what Upton did would likely have resulted in a disciplinary procedure against him.

What she did know, however, was that Dr Upton’s right to use the women’s changing room had already been affirmed by senior staff months earlier. Consultants had been told in autumn 2023 that DU—biologically male, in his 20s—was entitled to use the female CR. Yet no similar communication was ever issued to nurses, many of whom used the same space.

Those who granted that permission should be disciplined or sacked, the same for those who failed to communicate this policy to nurses and other female staff who would be subjected to illegal male intrusion as a result.

Labour MP says people who don’t believe in magic gender are swivel-eyed loons.

A Labour backbencher has been filmed deriding “transphobes” as “swivel-eyed” and suggesting they are “not very well people”. Tim Roca described the Supreme Court judgment on trans rights as “very depressing” and rejected his own party’s stance that it had brought “clarity”.

…

He made the remarks during a talk he gave earlier this month at an event hosted by the University of Westminster, called Queering Academia.

“I think actually the UK has now really gone down the rabbit hole into the way the United States discusses issues of gender, race, poverty, all of that,” he said. “So if we can bring the debate back into being one based on rationalism and compassion – and actually as we know, the facts – I think that’s a much better place for all of us to be.”

Yes, quite: the facts. Fact #1: humans can’t change sex.

“What we can’t be, is we can’t look like the alternative version of the transphobes. The best argument against them is a conversation with them, because they look swivel-eyed and honestly, they’re not very well people, I don’t think, the ones that I’ve met. So we have to make sure, as passionate we are, that we’re talking passionately but sensibly and bringing people around.”

By insisting that humans can change sex. It’s not going to work, chum.

Speaking at a panel event titled Leading While Queer, he attacked the Supreme Court judgment that womanhood is legally defined by biological sex.

Because “womanhood” should obviously be defined by whatever someone says, so if a serial rapist says he’s a woman he is a woman and you had better shut up.

He also criticised Baroness Falkner, the outgoing chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), and said Labour MPs were pushing for a pro-Trans replacement.

Baroness Falkner came under attack from Left-wing backbenchers after the watchdog issued guidance in light of the verdict, banning trans women from female toilets.

“I challenged the equalities watchdog after that very depressing Supreme Court judgment,” the Macclesfield MP said. “The EHRC is clearly led by somebody who is not a friend of our community. In my view, I want to make sure the next head of the EHRC is somebody who is a friend of our community. And I’ve got colleagues in Parliament who are working really, really hard on that. But challenging the EHRC interim guidance, which is appalling, was really, really important.”

He disputed that the judgment had brought “clarity”, saying it had “caused fear and incredible uncertainty and…undermined protections” for trans people.”

Protections for female people of course don’t matter at all.

On Day 3 of Peggie v NHS Fife & Dr B Upton, the tribunal heard from Dr Elspeth Pitt, a senior consultant who encountered Dr Upton in visible emotional distress on Christmas Eve 2023. What unfolded was a revealing portrait of a system primed to cushion one staff member’s emotional response—so long as that staff member identified as trans.

Pitt testified that she found Upton “very shaken,” “pale,” and “sobbing” after a confrontation with nurse Sandy Peggie (SP) in the female changing room. The details were vague—Pitt could not recall the exact words—but Upton felt “cornered” and likened the encounter to hearing something as hurtful as a comparison to a rapist. Pitt moved the conversation to a wellbeing room and let him talk, then advised him to go home and rest.

But Upton felt cornered.

Did he now.

Why why why did Dr Pitt not pause to wonder how Peggie felt? Why in hell did it not occur to her to ask Upton whether Peggie might have felt “cornered” to find a man in the changing room with her? Why did it not occur to her to pause for a minute and compare the two people who were in that women’s changing room? How did she manage not to remember that small middle-aged women are not generally a threat to large men in their twenties?

It’s all so Platonic. Never mind the bodies, we’re talking about the souls here. It doesn’t matter that Upton is young and huge and male, because in his mind he’s a tiny delicate girl, an Audrey Hepburn if you like, and Peggie is a looming terrifying monstrous harridan, Margaret Hamilton riding a broomstick. Physical reality is nothing, imagination is everything. Punishment, on the other hand, is very concrete and real.

She also walked him to his car, explaining that although any threat was “unlikely,” it felt like the right thing to do. When pressed later about whether this meant she believed Upton was at risk, Pitt said no—it was simply kindness.

What about Sandy Peggie? Why did it not cross her mind to wonder how she was doing after this encounter? Why did she not worry about Sandy Peggie’s feelings in the wake of Upton’s intrusion?

What she did know, however, was that Dr Upton’s right to use the women’s changing room had already been affirmed by senior staff months earlier. Consultants had been told in autumn 2023 that DU—biologically male, in his 20s—was entitled to use the female CR. Yet no similar communication was ever issued to nurses, many of whom used the same space. Pitt admitted as much: “I don’t recall,” she said, when asked if anyone told them. The policy was clear, the institution said. But it remained a private understanding among senior medics—leaving women to discover its implications only when emotionally overwhelmed men arrived in their changing room.

There it is again. Every accommodation for the men; absolutely nothing for the women. It’s like a parody of the class system.

When barrister Charlotte Elves asked if Searle’s internal message to consultants—expressing support for Upton and condemning SP’s behaviour—was appropriate, Pitt hedged. The email wasn’t “specific,” she conceded, and “could be read” as taking sides. But her broader defence was that senior staff were simply trying to make Upton feel safe. Elves pressed harder. Given Upton’s height (over six feet), age, and physical stature compared to the much smaller SP, was it credible to suggest he’d been under threat? Pitt resisted the framing. Upton hadn’t claimed physical danger, she said—just that he was deeply upset.

Ok. Let’s put it this way. Suppose Upton had actually raped a woman that night. Suppose Pitt encountered him later sobbing about his victim’s reaction to being raped. Would she even then have all the sympathy for him and none for her? Because that’s the logic here.

What the tribunal heard was not a story of safety protocols or consistent policy. It was a lesson in which emotions get urgency, which bodies get accommodation, and whose discomfort is quietly absorbed without question.

Goddam right.

It just gets worse and worse.

Good old Esther, Louise and Lauren are aware, so that’s nice.

Poor darling fragile “Beth” was approached by this peon of a nurse in the changing room for female nurses simply because he’s neither a nurse nor female! Can you believe it?! Will the working class never learn to stay in its place? Will women never learn to obey?? We women must join hands to shun and punish this dreadful upstart of a female nurse who dared to tell a staring male doctor to get out! And she did it in a very aggressive and confrontational manner, too, instead of tugging on her forelock and apologizing and making her voice soft and tiny and curtsying five or ten times.

Beth is understandably shaken and distressed. Poor Beth! Poor poor darling wee Beth who is much taller and much bulkier than Sandie, and a doctor as opposed to a nurse, and posh as opposed to working class – so you see obviously we are on poor Beth’s side and simply cannot wait to throw this impertinent nurse woman to the wolves.

What a horrific bunch of people.

For Women Scotland back in February:

Imagine, if you will, a man called Pete. Pete is a manly-man, tall, with a beard and well-developed muscles. He’s also not real – or at least there may be many such men called Pete in the world, but the Pete who became a talking point in the Sandie Peggie tribunal this week is an invention of Naomi Cunningham, the barrister acting for Ms Peggie. Pete, Ms Cunningham suggested, enters the female changing rooms where a woman stands in her bra: he fails to leave; he shuts the door and walks into the room; he starts to undress. At what stage is a woman allowed to feel uncomfortable or scared? Well, according to the Doctor who was, by his own testimony, distressed, upset, and scared of an encounter with a “hostile” and “aggressive” (his words) nurse, the response of the unclothed woman should depend on the state of Pete’s mind. After all, the fictitious Pete claimed to identify as a woman and no-one, least of all mere actual women, should be permitted to question his sincerity…

Without knowing Pete’s intention, Dr Upton said, we couldn’t judge his conduct in walking into the ladies and starting to strip, “I don’t consider it to be inherently menacing or sexual”, it might provoke “tricky conversations” about how we view gender and a “lack of willingness in a transphobic society to explore gender identity”, but ultimately Pete deserves to be treated with respect. In other words, suck it up, women!

Ah yes, he doesn’t consider it inherently menacing or sexual, so people who do are just wrong, and transphobic besides.

For Upton, a woman’s unwillingness to be in a vulnerable state with a strange man is not dependent on her fears but her bigotry. She may only be be 5’6” to his 6ft, he may be a fit young man of 28 to her 50 years, he may have the advantage of class and connections, but in his telling, she represents the oppressor class. He was scared and shaking at being alone with a termagant: “I’ve never been spoken to like that in my life!”, he said on more than one occasion…

That would explain a lot. Can you say “long overdue”?

Is NHS Fife trying to get sent to bed without any supper?

Lawyers for a nurse who complained about sharing a hospital changing room with a trans doctor have condemned an NHS Fife statement on the case as “irresponsible”. The health board published the four-page document online while evidence was being heard in a case brought by nurse Sandie Peggie.

The statement alleged the employment tribunal had triggered “a threat of physical harm and sexual violence” against NHS staff. The matter was raised before the tribunal adjourned for the weekend and Judge Alexander Kemp said he would assess it before making any public comment.

Later, Scotland’s information commissioner criticised NHS Fife and said he may report the board to the Court of Session.

David Hamilton appeared to take exception to the statement setting out in detail the costs of the tribunal so far. He wrote: “On 18 July 2025, NHS Fife released a media statement that referenced the commissioner’s decision 133/2025.

“The petulant tone of NHS Fife’s latest statement is quite remarkable but it is the contents that concern me most. They have now cast doubt upon the assurances they gave me regarding compliance with my decision notice. I will investigate further and if the authority has not indeed fully complied with my decision then I may report the matter to the Court of Session as a contempt of court.”

The wheels of justice grind slowly…

Earlier, the tribunal heard Dr Beth Upton was “distressed” and sobbed while telling a senior colleague about a confrontation with a nurse over the use of female changing rooms.

Dr Elspeth Pitt, who is a consultant in emergency medicine with NHS Fife, told the tribunal Dr Beth Upton – who is a transgender woman – appeared pale and was “very shaken” when they met in a corridor at the Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy at the end of their shift.

Oh ffs. The man is a whale. Peggie is quite small. I get that big people can have their feelings hurt, certainly, but I am really not convinced that Upton was so emotionally wounded by Peggie’s preference for a changing room without men in it that he turned pale and trembly and “sobbed” while telling his story. I don’t think he was hurt or upset, I think he was doing whatever he could to destroy Peggie’s life. I think he was angry, not upset or hurt, and he put on an act to get his revenge.

Dr Pitt, who was on call through the night into Christmas morning, was asked what state Dr Upton was in. The consultant replied: “She looked very shaken and she was visibly distressed and upset.” Dr Pitt added Dr Upton looked “quite pale” and “startled”.

The consultant was then told there had been a “very upsetting incident”. Dr Pitt added: “She was really upset. She had felt very fearful and that point felt cornered.”

Cornered by what? A bear? A bull moose in rut? A chainsaw?

Very fearful of what?

The tribunal said the encounter with Ms Peggie had “become very unpleasant and painful for her”. Dr Pitt added: “The gist was that Sandie felt that Dr Upton should not be in the changing room.”

The consultant said she was told the tone of the disagreement was “aggressive” and “unkind”.

Oh yes? Well imagine how Peggie felt, bleeding through her clothes, needing to clean herself up, and finding a god damn man in the room where she needed to do that. Imagine the shame, discomfort, embarrassment, shock, frustration, exasperation – what about her??? Why are all these damn fools so eager to think of huge Upton as the victim and much smaller and female Peggie the snarling villain?

Even if you think Upton had a right to be there, or even if you think Peggie should have asked him nicely to get the fuck out of the women’s room, how can you simply float high above the vast physical discrepancies between them, along with the class and professional rank discrepancies? How can you so thoroughly lose sight of the fact that Upton had and has all the physical and class and political power in this conflict while Peggie is the underdog many times over?

I don’t suppose we’ll ever know.

Aha, it turns out everything is Sandie Peggie’s fault after all.

NHS Fife has revealed it’s called in police after a threat of “physical harm and sexual violence” was received by a staff member as the health board defended its actions in a contentious employment tribunal.

In a statement published just as the tribunal was concluding for the day, the health board also hit out at scolded the organisation Sex Matters, whose chair is the KC representing the claimaint in the case, nurse Sandie Peggie.

…

In the surprise statement this afternoon, NHS Fife said it was “having to defend” itself and wanted to answer questions posed by the press and politicians, addressing “misinformation” online. It urged for respect for “the privacy of all those giving evidence”, following “significant and very polarised debate” on social media.

Hmm. Polarized debate is it. Whose fault is that? Who polarized it? Which team is it that thinks it’s fine for men to hang out in women’s changing rooms and toilets but not at all fine for women to want their own changing rooms and toilets, with zero men joining in?

The statement said: “In some cases, however, what began as debate has evolved into much more worrying behaviour, including a threat of physical harm and sexual violence, which has required the involvement of Police Scotland.”

Yo NHS Fife do you have any idea of the kind of bullying that gender-skeptical women are subject to?

It said: “The claimant’s case is being supported by Sex Matters, whose chief executive officer and co-founder was called as a witness by the claimant in the earlier hearing.

“The claimant’s barrister is also chair of Sex Matters. Other members of the organisation’s ‘advisory group’ have provided commentary to the media on a number of occasions where no reference is made to their direct involvement.”

But Maya Forstater, chief executive of Sex Matters, said the statement was “an extraordinary intervention from NHS Fife, even by the board’s standards. NHS Fife has dug itself into a reputational black hole. If the only way forward the board can see is to lash out, including by criticising Sex Matters, which has at all times acted with propriety and in pursuit of its charitable objects, that suggests desperation.”

It also suggests a certain deficit of…what to call it…decency?

H/t Wes

Oh dear how sad, Trump is simply furious at the Wall Street Journal. Whatever next? A feud with Putin? Fisticuffs with JD? Fox News on the naughty stool?

A “bawdy” letter to Jeffrey Epstein bearing President Donald Trump’s signature was included in an album of letters Epstein received for his 50th birthday in 2003, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday evening, citing documents reviewed by the newspaper.

The letter, which the Journal said Trump sent at the request of Epstein’s friend Ghislaine Maxwell, would have been written 16 years before the Justice Department charged the now-dead Epstein with child sex trafficking in 2019, during Trump’s first term in office.

The missive, which Trump denied having written, came to light as the president angrily tries to tamp down growing criticism of the decision by Attorney General Pam Bondi not to release more evidence the Justice Department obtained during its investigation of Epstein.

It’s quite tricky trying to tamp down things angrily. For tamping down you need placid emollient calm, not sputtering rage.

According to the Journal, the letter “contains several lines of typewritten text framed by the outline of a naked woman, which appears to be hand-drawn with a heavy marker.”

“A pair of small arcs denotes the woman’s breasts, and the future president’s signature is a squiggly ‘Donald’ below her waist, mimicking pubic hair,” the Journal’s Khadeeja Safdar and Joe Palazzolo reported.

Hur hur. He’s such a funny guy.

After the Journal’s story was published, Trump said he would file a lawsuit against the newspaper, its parent company NewsCorp and against Rupert Murdoch, whose family holds a controlling stake in NewsCorp.

It’s so sad when Mommy and Daddy can’t get along.

Let’s read this, shall we?

NHS Fife is setting out its position on a number of matters related to the ongoing employment tribunal and provide clarity around some of the misinformation circulating around the tribunal case that NHS Fife is defending.

NHS Fife is so furious it can’t even get a coherent sentence out. It means “in order to provide clarity” or similar.

The legal case brought against NHS Fife began after it commenced an internal investigation following allegations made by a member of its staff. The claimant’s case is being supported by Sex Matters, whose chief executive officer and co-founder was called as a witness by the claimant in the earlier hearing. The claimant’s barrister is also chair of Sex Matters. Other members of the organisation’s ‘advisory group’ have provided commentary to the media on a number of occasions where no reference is made to their direct involvement in the organisation. Sex Matters have been very active, making numerous statements which it would appear are aimed at steering public opinion in a way that NHS Fife as a public body clearly cannot.

Aw, how sad. Poor NHS Fife. On the other hand, NHS Fife is the party that is hell-bent on punishing a female nurse for objecting to a man in her changing room, so my sympathy turns out to be quite limited.

We value the contribution of every member of staff and the diversity that strengthens our teams, services, and care.

Blah blah blah and yet you don’t protect every female member of staff from being leered at by hulking men in the female changing rooms.

Gosh, you don’t say.

In March, after Cammie Woodman won a match she was thrown out of a New York metro tennis women’s league because she is a trans woman.

On June 28-29, the self-named “Trans Tennis Princess” from Brooklyn completed a sweep to a crown at the Lincoln Terrace Open. Woodman raced through the tournament’s women’s division through four matches, giving up a mere two sets for the entire draw en route to her first open title.

Well of course he fucking did, because he’s a man.

She said it was a symbol of how far she’s come from being a self-described “queer kid who never played a sport” when she first took up the game.

“I had lost in the first round, um, the past two years competing in this tournament,” Woodman told Outsports. “It was a really big deal to me to get one win, let alone win the whole thing.”

Ooh yes, well done you, really fantastic job of cheating all those stupid women. High five, bro.

Revenge is a dish best served cold, yeah?

Maurene Comey, a career federal prosecutor who worked on the Jeffrey Epstein case and was abruptly fired by the Trump administration this week, warned her colleagues Thursday about the chilling effect such firings could have on their work.

“If a career prosecutor can be fired without reason, fear may seep into the decisions of those who remain,” she wrote in an email that was circulated to her colleagues within the federal prosecutor’s office in Manhattan. “Do not let that happen.”

She called fear “the tool of a tyrant, wielded to suppress independent thought.”

Ms. Comey, who is the daughter of James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director and an adversary of President Trump, was also the lead prosecutor in the recent trial of Sean Combs, the hip-hop entrepreneur who was acquitted of the most serious charges he faced earlier this month.

Comey wasn’t an adversary of Trump: it was the other way around. Trump was an adversary of Comey, because Trump is a crook and Comey knows it.

Nice title.

I can’t even be sure of my own sex, equalities officer tells tribunal

An equalities officer who advised that a transgender doctor should be allowed to use a hospital’s female changing room has said she cannot be sure of her own biological sex.

Isla Bumba told an employment tribunal that the definition of biological sex was “far more complex” than whether someone had a male or female body.

She is very young, she is NHS Fife’s equality and human rights lead officer, and she is paid far more than Sandie Peggie is.

Ms Bumba also told the tribunal, brought by nurse Sandie Peggie, that she did not need to “know anything” about the body of Dr Beth Upton, who was born male, before advising that the medic should be given access to the female changing room.

So the body is wholly irrelevant is it? The fact that Upton is huge and Peggie is not just doesn’t matter? Upton’s genitalia don’t matter? And this state of affairs is our new utopia?

Transgender women presented less of a threat to females than ordinary men, she argued, saying the only case she was aware of that suggested otherwise was that of the trans rapist Isla Bryson.

No no no, Bryson is not a trans rapist, he’s a real rapist. He’s a real rapist who claims to be a woman, adding insult to injury yet again.

Ms Bumba said she sought guidance from other health boards about their practices before she issued the advice about Dr Upton, as NHS Fife did not have a policy. She said there was a “pretty wide consensus” that trans staff should be allowed to use facilities that aligned with their self-identified gender.

However, she admitted that she had not considered the Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992, which state that separate communal changing and lavatory facilities must be provided for male and female workers.

Well of course she hadn’t. 1992!! Be serious. You might as well expect her to consider regulations from 1892.

Pressed by Ms Cunningham that she had denied biological women a “genuine single-sex space for changing”, Ms Bumba said: “I’m not sure I agree with your definition of biological sex in that sense. I think you’ve simplified what could be deemed biological sex, but in actual fact, it’s far more complex.”

So it’s not biological sex, it’s something far more complex than that? Which would be…what? Exactly?

If you’re going to tell silly braggy lies about yourself and your relatives, at least don’t include details that make the fictionality obvious.

On Tuesday, Trump conjured an especially odd imaginary tale – that linked his uncle with the late terrorist Theodore “Ted” Kaczynski, better known as the Unabomber.

Trump was speaking at a Pennsylvania event about energy and innovation when he said he had to “brag just for a second” about his uncle’s intelligence. After wrongly saying his uncle was “the longest-serving professor in the history of MIT” (he was one of the longest-serving but not the very longest) and wrongly saying his uncle’s three university degrees were “in nuclear, chemical, and math” (two were in electrical engineering and one was in physics), the president claimed, “Kaczynski was one of his students.”

But of course he wasn’t, but before we get to that, let me just sigh heavily about that “having to” yammer about his uncle yet again when he’s done it before and been laughed at for doing it, and when it’s just a tedious windbag story of the kind that tedious windbags tell. I hate tedious windbaggery – guys (it’s always guys) who think they’re great story-tellers, and go into story-telling mode in the middle of what could have been a normal conversation. I’ve known a few, and they bring me out in a rash. Trump is like the Platonic essence of that guy.

(I think I’ve said all this before, in reaction to a similar Great Storyteller act of Trump’s from Season 1, so that makes me a bit of a tedious windbag too, but at least I’m not doing it live onstage.)

He went on to tell a story about having asked his uncle about what Kaczynski was like. “‘I said, ‘What kind of a student was he, Uncle John?’ Dr. John Trump. I said, ‘What kind of a student?’ And then he said, ‘Seriously, good.’ He said, ‘He’d correct – he’d go around correcting everybody.’ But it didn’t work out too well for him.”

But that’s all horseshit.

First, the president’s uncle died in 1985. Kaczynski was publicly revealed as the Unabomber more than a decade later, in 1996, when he was captured; before that, he had lived as a recluse in the Montana wilderness. There is no apparent reason that Donald Trump would have been asking anyone about Kaczynski in 1985 or earlier.

Second, Kaczynski attended Harvard University and the University of Michigan, not MIT. 

Apart from that it’s all very plausible.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment on the president’s tale.

Gee I wonder why.

Wait, there’s a thing here.

From the hearing today:

Ms Peggie’s lawyer Naomi Cunningham later quizzed Ms Bumba over whether she had stated in guidance to NHS Fife that the nurse had the right to be gender critical.

She said she was “100% certain” she had done this.

The lawyer said Ms Bumba’s advice was inclusive of trans people but not women who would not want to share changing facilities with them, citing women who had been sexually assaulted or had religious beliefs.

And hey you know what? We just don’t want to, for a host of reasons, derived from a lifetime of being seen and treated as inferior in some way, by the media and the entertainment industry and by people we know and by ancient habits and the list is endless. We are on the back foot in relation to men, and we just don’t want to be forced to cuddle up with men in situations where we just don’t get to say no or walk away. We just don’t want to.

[Cunningham] accused Ms Bumba and NHS Fife of validating trans staff but sacrificing “the privacy, dignity and safety” of women in the process, which [Bumba] denied.

Ms Bumba said no women had raised concerns with her over trans staff sharing the changing facilities.

No of course they fucking didn’t. This is the thing I mentioned in the first paragraph. No of course they didn’t raise concerns with her, because they didn’t dare. They live in this suffocating atmosphere of Don’t You Dare that we all live in, and have lived in for ten years or more. We know what we’re not allowed to say, we know what the Isla Bumbas of the world will do to us if we say something else, we know we are not free to say no. Of course they didn’t “raise concerns” with her, just as a swimmer doesn’t “raise concerns” with that shark over there when there’s no rescue boat in sight. They didn’t raise concerns with her because they didn’t want her ruining their lives.

Fake official.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem claimed Sunday that reports that she’d kneecapped FEMA’s response to the deadly flooding in Texas were “fake news.”

During an appearance on NBC News’s Meet the Press, host Kristen Welker asked Noem to respond to a New York Times report that found thousands of calls for assistance from flood victims to FEMA call centers went unanswered because the secretary had failed to renew contracts to keep call center employees in place until nearly a week later.

“Why did it take so long to extend those contracts?” Welker asked.

“It’s just false. Those contracts were in place. Nobody—no employees were off of work. Every one of them were answering calls. So false reporting, fake news,” Noem said.

She says, lying through her teeth.

“Just to be very clear, on July 7, 15.9 percent of calls were answered,” Welker pressed. “I mean, does that concern you that only 15 percent of calls were answered? These are people in a desperate state, FEMA often the first call that they make. Only 15 percent were answered on July 7, several days after the floods?”

But Noem wouldn’t hear it.

“That report needs to be valid-ified,” she said. “I’m not certain it’s accurate, and I’m not sure where it came from. And the individuals who are giving you information out of FEMA, I’d love to have them put their names behind it. Because, the anonymous attacks to polit-ili-cize the situation is completely wrong.”

…

This isn’t the first report that Noem botched the response to the flooding in Texas. Noem reportedly delayed FEMA’s initial response by instituting a policy that required her to personally sign off on all DHS expenditures exceeding $100,000. FEMA officials, who were unaware of the new rule, didn’t receive Noem’s go-ahead until Monday, at which point floodwaters had been raging for more than 72 hours. Meanwhile, she posted on Instagram asking her followers to vote for their favorite portrait of her to be used as her official governor’s portrait.

How tasteful.

But you don’t. You say you do but you don’t.

A chief constable’s decision to allow uniformed police officers to take part in a Pride march was unlawful, a judge has ruled.

A case was brought against Northumbria Police Chief Constable Vanessa Jardine by Lindsey Smith, from Newcastle, who describes herself as “gender critical”. Ms Smith argued Mrs Jardine and her officers’ participation in Newcastle Pride last year meant they would have been unable to remain impartial if a dispute between those with similar beliefs and trans rights supporters had occurred.

The force said it would work through the ruling to understand the implications but would remain true to its values of “fairness, visibility, and support for all”.

But those are not your values. You don’t promote fairness, visibility, and support for all. You ignore women, and you also promote visibility and support for people who are energetically bullying and replacing and insulting women. You don’t get to say you support fairness for all, because you don’t.

By the way, women are half of people, and all of the gestators of people.

The force said participating in Pride allowed it to be visible in the LGBT community.

It said the chief constable believed the its participation in Pride was one way to demonstrate “the stigma which has traditionally afflicted members of the LGBT+ community will not be reflected” in the community’s interactions with police.

Ok but what about other kinds of people who are afflicted by stigma?