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?

Trump is such a difficult guest/roommate/colleague/friend.

Trump is accusing some of his onetime supporters of being “weaklings” who are falling prey to Democratic “bullshit” about the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein — concluding that he no longer wants their support.

The message was the clearest sign yet of the cracks emerging in the president’s coalition, many of whom are loudly demanding more information about the disgraced financier, who has been subject to myriad conspiracies since his death by suicide in 2019. And some of his allies don’t appear to be listening, with Republicans in Congress taking steps Wednesday morning to potentially force the Justice Department to release more documents.

How is this possible when the dictator specifically told them not to?

“Their new SCAM is what we will forever call the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax, and my PAST supporters have bought into this ‘bullshit,’ hook, line, and sinker,” Trump wrote in a missive on Truth Social. “They haven’t learned their lesson, and probably never will, even after being conned by the Lunatic Left for 8 long years.”

Ouch! That’s how he talks to his fans? I don’t know about you but I would be quite offended, and would demand a refund.

“I have had more success in 6 months than perhaps any President in our Country’s history, and all these people want to talk about, with strong prodding by the Fake News and the success starved Dems, is the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax,” he wrote. “Let these weaklings continue forward and do the Democrats work, don’t even think about talking of our incredible and unprecedented success, because I don’t want their support anymore!”

I don’t want it any more! You ruined it! You ruined everything! I hate you! I’m never talking to you again! Never never never never!!!

Sigh.

Originally a comment by maddog on A lemon by any other name.

Where to begin?

1. He talks with his hands. They never stop moving. He must be very distracting, not to say annoying, in a courtroom setting.

2. What is he wearing? A blazer over his undershirt?

3. “The UK Supreme Court ruled that the term ‘sex’ in the Equality Act must mean biological sex, even though ‘bioligical’ is not written into the Act.”

Well, duh. Statutory construction, how does it work? Of course, if the Act had made that clear in the first place, we wouldn’t have had all the silliness of men taking over everything from women under the johnny-come-lately doctrine of “transgenderism.” It wasn’t made explicit in the Act for the simple reason that nobody thought it would have to be said, that everyone knows what “sex” means, and nobody anticipated the perversion of ordinary language so successfully achieved by the trans lobby. If “biological” had been included in the statutory language, there would not have been the need to litigate what the statute means. But interpreting statutes is what courts DO. You, of all people, as a barrister, should know that. The trans lobby created “ambiguity” where there really was no cause to do so, and thus brought upon themselves the necessity of litigation to declare the proper meaning of the statute. Trans activists have only themselves to blame for this result.

4. The EHRC interim guidance “effectively exclud[es] trans people from single-sex spaces, denying them privacy . . . ”

No, it doesn’t, you liar. The guidance makes clear — as trans activists shout so vociferously when it suits their purposes — that sex and gender are not the same thing. Single-sex spaces are single SEX, without regard to anyone’s gender identity. It doesn’t stop anyone from claiming any gender identity they want. It’s just that the relevant criterion is biological sex, so use the facilities for your sex. So-called trans women can be that gender identity to their hearts’ content, and still use the single-sex facility for their biological sex.

As to denying trans people’s “right to privacy,” trans identified men in men’s spaces, and trans identified women in women’s spaces, will have as much privacy for their intimate functions as any other man or woman in the appropriate sex-segregated space. But that’s not what they really mean. What they want is for no one to be able to notice or remark on their actual sex. It’s like their being “transgender” is some kind of state secret. It’s not. If you are out and about in public, it is usually pretty obvious what your sex is, particularly if you are a man, no matter what you wear or how made up you are. (Heh: made up. Snerk.) That’s the one that matters the most: for women to be protected from the men, and to know who the men are. Women are peculiarly vulnerable to male violence, with potential consequences that no men ever have to face.

5. “. . . and erasing intersex identities.”

Another lie. Quelle surprise.

For one thing, trans dogmatists insist on using the incorrect term, “intersex,” rather than “disorders of sex development,” or DSDs. They do this deliberately to muddy the waters, to pretend that there is such a thing as a “spectrum” of sexes. “Intersex” individuals presumably lie on some continuum between the endpoints of “male” or “female.” T advocates thus make people with DSDs pawns in their fight, even though DSDs have nothing to do with transgenderism. DSDs happen to people who are one sex or the other (not both; not “in between”), but something in their genetic makeup has interfered with normal development of the reproductive pathway for whichever sex their body is.

For another thing, having a DSD is not a “gender identity.” DSDs are objectively observable and ascertainable medical conditions. Sometimes there will be no reason to suspect the existence of a DSD until puberty. But the undeniable physiological changes wrought by puberty can be scientifically examined, and the existence of a DSD condition can be either ruled out or confirmed.

It just goes to show that the trans lobby will involuntarily co-opt anyone and anything to their cause, if it will serve their purposes. TAs are users, with no regard to the desires and feelings of others. Many people with DSDs wish the trans lobby would leave them alone, and not use them as a political football. TAs don’t care.

By and large, the people who claim to be “transgender” do not have any DSDs, and have perfectly normal male or female reproductive systems. So the “what about Intersex?” gambit is a non-starter. It is irrelevant.

6. The Supreme Court ruling supposedly “follows the ninth pattern of genocide: denial of identity.”

What are these numbered “patterns of genocide”? What is the evidence that substantiates the relation of any such “patterns” to the practice of “genocide”? How many of these ” patterns” does it take to ascertain whether there is any “genocide” being contemplated or carried out? Is one sufficient? It doesn’t seem so.

The only people denying anyone’s “identity” are the trans activists themselves. They are denying the existence of the manifestly observable sex of their own bodies, in favor of fantasies about being the sex that they actually are not. Trans activists also deny the identity of women as an oppressed class on the basis of their sex.

Why are you talking about “genocide”? The -cide suffix has to do with killing. HomiCIDE is the killing of a human being (“homo” = human). ParriCIDE is the killing of a father (“parri” = “patri-” = father). SuiCIDE is the killing of oneself (“sui” = self). Where is the killing in this supposed “genocide”? AFAICT, no one has been killed, is being killed, or is contemplated to be killed. Without any killing, past, present, or future, how can there be a “genocide”? Methinks he doth protest too much. All that’s happening is that transgender people have to abide by sex classifications, where sex is the relevant consideration. It doesn’t stop them being “trans” at all. It just makes them do their cosplay in the bathrooms, locker rooms, changing rooms, hospital wards, prisons, etc. , for their sex. So why is anyone, Lemkin Institute or nonbinary barrister Oscar Davies, yammering on about “genocide”?

7. The Lemkin Institute is alarmed by government rules that demonstrate intentional erasure, and hostile media framing of transgender people as “other.” That’s evidently the mechanics of the “ninth pattern of genocide.” “When you force people out of bathrooms, you’re cutting away at the right to exist themselves.”

Oscar, Oscar, Oscar.

No one is being ” forced out of [all] bathrooms,” such that they don’t have ” a right to exist themselves.” No one is “cutting away at” the right of trans people to exist. Go right ahead and express your “gender identity” — whatever that may mean — however, and however much, you like. No one is stopping you or saying you can’t. Just, when it comes to bathrooms and other things classified by sex, stick to the ones for your sex. Pretty simple.

8. “When genocide prevention experts raise a red flag, you don’t debate semantics. You stop, you reflect, and you act.”

For crying out loud. What makes anyone a “genocide prevention expert”? How do you know this Lemkin Institute has any “genocide prevention” expertise? I’m not impressed. Neither the Lemkin Institute nor you seems to know what “genocide” even means. There’s no killing going on, nor any prospect on the horizon. No genocide. The “red flag” in this case is utterly baseless. It’s Chicken Little, screaming about a disaster that isn’t happening and isn’t going to happen. It’s typical transperbole: if a trans person doesn’t get their way, it’s oppression and literal violence. Get real.

Yes, we noted the false red flag. We stopped, and we reflected on the claims being made. They are bogus. So we continue to act: to restore women’s sex-based rights, and to safeguard children from dangerous interventions.

A bit more on the two people who idennify as an institute:

Their Ukraine project sounds decent enough, but it’s still at least deceptive for one or two people to idennify as an institute.

H/t Piglet for the Bellingcat tip.

From last November, The Algemeiner on the trickery of the bogus “Lemkin Institute”:

Members of the family of Raphael Lemkin, a Jewish lawyer who coined the term “genocide” and pushed for the passage of the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, say they are outraged that a Pennsylvania-based nonprofit organization is using the Lemkin name to pursue an agenda of extreme anti-Israel activism.

The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention was initially registered as a Pennsylvania nonprofit corporation on Aug. 19, 2021, and won US federal tax-exempt recognition in September 2023. In recent months, it has veered into strident anti-Israel political advocacy, supporting anti-Israel campus protests and reaching millions of viewers with social media posts that falsely accuse Israel of genocide.

Less than one week after the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel last Oct. 7, the institute released a “genocide alert” calling the onslaught an “unprecedented military operation against Israel” while decrying the Jewish state’s actions against Hamas as “genocide.” The Oct. 13 message came before Israeli launched its ground offensive in Gaza.

…

Joseph Lemkin, a New Jersey lawyer who is related to Raphael Lemkin, said he was unfamiliar with the institute until being informed of it by The Algemeiner.

Lemkin, who represented the family at a UN event marking the 65th anniversary of the genocide convention, described himself as “totally outraged” to see his late relative’s name used to push an anti-Israel agenda. His father was Raphael Lemkin’s first cousin.

Whatever you think about Israel v Hamas or Hamas v Israel, it’s clear that the “Lemkin Institute” has zero actual connection to Raphael Lemkin and is exploiting his name in a particularly revolting way.

H/t Piglet

And that’s not even the end of it.

Two topples in one day!