That UN Women post is getting a lot of heated “the hell it is” from women, I’m glad to say.

One example:

It is your role as feminists to support and safeguard and empower women. Instead you seek to force them into submission to new and alien definitions, and you fail to protect us from a movement that polices and even denies our language, our right to describe our bodies, to name and identify the source of our oppression and to name and describe the violence enacted to maintain a world order that will forever deny us this most fundamental liberty and tool: to name our oppressors and their actions.

Instead you open the door to individuals and organisations whose aims are often directly opposed to ours – feminists object to mutilations, even medicalised ones, they lobby for these – and you participate in the coercion, blatant blackmail of impoverished women: bow and obey and you may have some hygiene, some healthcare, some education while trans lobbying groups mete out terms and conditions, or die in a ditch.You have the power to do all of this. But that doesn’t make it right.

There are many more.

UN Women giving away women’s rights and self-definition and reality again:

One, no, people don’t have a blanket right to identify themselves the way they want to. That’s just not true. All of us barring one person lack the right to identify ourselves as the president of the US. We can’t identify ourselves inaccurately if we’re stopped for reckless driving and have to show our driver’s license. We can’t identify ourselves as little Kathy’s mommy and take her home from school if we’re not little Kathy’s mommy. It’s just not true, yet people keep saying it. We can fantasize however we like, but once we involve other people, it’s not that simple. It’s not even close to that simple.

And two – what the fuck? Like hell it’s our role as feminists to “always be there” – it’s our role as feminists to refuse to be the sex that’s expected to “always be there.” It’s often our role as friends, mothers, daughters, sisters, employees, colleagues, comrades to be there – but as feminists? No. And always be there for men who say they “identify as” women and that therefore we have to agree that they are women? No no no no NO.

And three, same again. No that’s not our role as feminists. It may or may not be our role as other things, but not as feminists. And mostly not even as other things. Being there is one thing, accepting people for who they are is another. It depends. It depends on who, in fact, they are. There are plenty of things that people can be that motivate me not to accept them for it, because the things are bad. I don’t accept Donald Trump for who he is – I passionately furiously with disgust and contempt and fury reject Donald Trump for who he is. I’m disappointed that Jeffrey Toobin hopped onto that list the other day. Ivanka Trump’s place on it is solid.

Just stop. Stop. UN Women is for women, not women plus men who “identify as” women. Stop making new rules that mean women can’t have anything at all to themselves. Just stop.

I’m wondering about the logistics.

Conversations over the dinner table that incite hatred must be prosecuted under Scotland’s hate crime law, the justice secretary has said.

Journalists and theatre directors should also face the courts if their work is deemed to deliberately stoke up prejudice, Humza Yousaf said.

When he says “the dinner table”…does he mean strictly dinner with the family? Or does he mean any dinner table? If you have friends over for pizza, does that count? If you go out for a hamburger with one or more other person(s) does that count? How about the lunch table? Breakfast? How about if no one ever sits down – how about if all the people eating the dinner or the meal does so standing at a kitchen counter – are they safe?

The BBC did an explainer on the bill last month.

A hate crime is a criminal offence that is based on prejudice against a specific group of people – for example attacking someone because of their religion or the colour of their skin.

Scotland already has various laws in place that offer additional protection to people from crimes based on their disability, race, religion, sexual orientation and transgender identity.

But not sex. Did you notice? Not sex. How odd that is. Religion, yes, but sex, no. Women just have to take it, I guess.

It means that crimes can be treated more seriously by the courts if the offender has shown “malice and ill-will” towards the victim based on their membership – or association with – one of the protected groups.

Cool that beating up women is a freeby on this one. No extra points because of misogyny!

The bill adds hate crime based on a person’s age to the list of protected groups, with hatred based on someone’s sex potentially to be added in the future.

Potentially. In the future. Don’t hold your breath.

It aims to simplify and clarify the law by bringing together the various existing hate crime laws into a single piece of legislation.

And it creates a new crime of “stirring up hatred” against the protected groups – which is defined as “behaving in a threatening or abusive manner, or communicating threatening or abusive material to another person”.

Including at the dinner table…but perhaps not the breakfast table. Here’s your out: just stir up hatred against women at the breakfast table and you’re doubly protected; you should be golden.

I especially love the “750” reference. Sly.

Trump is hurrying to destroy everything he can before he’s dragged out screaming. Today it’s the Tongass National Forest.

Federal protections for Alaska’s Tongass National Forest will be lifted this week by the Trump administration, allowing “logging and other forms of development” to occur in the world’s largest intact temperate rainforest known as America’s Amazon, The Washington Post reported Wednesday.

…

The newspaper, which noted that the federal protections were put in place in 2001 during the waning days of Bill Clinton’s presidency, said the rollback by President Donald Trump represents “one of the most sweeping public lands rollbacks” Trump has made during his tenure. The President previously removed acreage from two national monuments and worked to open more federal lands and waters to oil drilling and mining.

The forest — about the size of West Virginia — and region form the world’s largest intact temperate rainforest. The area is a vibrant habitat for bear, eagle and salmon, plus towering old-growth cedar, hemlock and spruce. It includes Alaska’s capital, Juneau, and 31 other communities.

If it ain’t broke, get busy breaking it.

Bonjour Charlie!

Trump is blithely putting people in danger to serve his purposes again. He did a rally at an airport in Omaha yesterday, and by the time he hopped back into Air Force One, the temperature had dropped below freezing.

But as long lines of MAGA-clad attendees queued up for buses to take them to distant parking lots, it quickly became clear something was wrong.

The buses, the huge crowd soon learned, couldn’t navigate the jammed airport roads. For hours, attendees — including many elderly Trump supporters — stood in the cold, as police scrambled to help those most at-risk get to warmth.

At least seven people were taken to hospitals, according to Omaha Scanner, which monitors official radio traffic. Police and fire authorities didn’t immediately return messages from The Washington Post early Wednesday and declined to provide reporters on the scene with precise numbers of how many needed treatment.

Why? It’s not a state secret, why refuse to answer questions?

After Trump’s speech, where he promised “we’re making that final turn” on covid-19 in a state where positivity rates exceed 20 percent, per the World-Herald, Trump flew away on Air Force One around 9 p.m. Attendees began lining up for buses to return to their cars.

It took until after midnight to get everyone out.

Soon, officers were radioing in about numerous elderly attendees struggling in the cold, according to Omaha Scanner. Police began shuttling some people to their cars to get them out of the elements.

…

“Supporters of the President were brought in, but buses weren’t able to get back to transport people out. It’s freezing and snowy in Omaha tonight,” tweeted Nebraska state Sen. Megan Hunt (D). “He truly does not care about you.”

He truly does not care about anyone.

The NY Times has another KABLOOEY about Trump’s tax returns and what they reveal.

He opened a new Trump Sewer in Chicago in September 2008, just as all the wheels were falling off. The new Sewer did not flourish.

…the skyscraper became another disappointment in a portfolio filled with them. Construction lagged. Condos proved hard to sell. Retail space sat vacant.

Yet for Mr. Trump and his company, the Chicago experience also turned out to be something else: the latest example of his ability to strong-arm major financial institutions and exploit the tax code to cushion the blow of his repeated business failures.

The president’s federal income tax records, obtained by The New York Times, show for the first time that, since 2010, his lenders have forgiven about $287 million in debt that he failed to repay. The vast majority was related to the Chicago project.

It’s fascinating, isn’t it? When poor people fall into debt they can’t repay, it can cripple their lives for years to come. When rich crooks do, they can rich crook their way into doing it again and again without a scratch.

When the project encountered problems, he tried to walk away from his huge debts. For most individuals or businesses, that would have been a recipe for ruin. But tax-return data, other records and interviews show that rather than warring with a notoriously litigious and headline-seeking client, lenders cut Mr. Trump slack — exactly what he seemed to have been counting on.

In other words he stole millions by being an evil bullying asshole.

Big banks and hedge funds gave him years of extra time to repay his debts. Even after Mr. Trump sued his largest lender, accusing it of preying on him, the bank agreed to lend him another $99 million — more than twice as much as was previously known — so that he could pay back what he still owed the bank on the defaulted Chicago loan, records show.

Ultimately, Mr. Trump’s lenders forgave much of what he owed.

Meanwhile Susan Smith who took on debt to attend a for-profit “university” – perhaps Trump “University” itself – is living in her car because the interest payments are more than she can earn.

He borrowed millions for the project, construction was slow, and then the economy started to go bad.

With the financial crisis enveloping the world, finding buyers for multimillion-dollar apartments suddenly became much harder. In the spring of 2008, Mr. Trump asked Deutsche Bank to delay the loan’s due date. The bank gave him an extra six months.

Six months later the economy was falling off a cliff. Trump and his junior crooks threw a party at the new Sewer to celebrate…something.

At that point, at least 159 units in the building were still unsold, and many more were under contract but hadn’t closed, according to New York court records. That meant hundreds of millions of dollars that Mr. Trump and his family had counted on to repay Deutsche Bank and Fortress hadn’t yet materialized. And the loans were due in barely six weeks.Mr. Trump sought another extension.

This time, Deutsche Bank said no.

Mr. Trump’s company still owed Deutsche Bank about $334 million in principal and interest, and Fortress $130 million, not including interest and fees.

Mr. Trump went on the offensive. In a letter to Deutsche Bank on Nov. 4, he accused it of helping ignite the financial crisis. This was important, because Mr. Trump went on to claim that the crisis constituted a “force majeure” — an act of God, like a natural disaster — that entitled him to extra time to repay the loans.

A few days later, Mr. Trump and his companies sued Deutsche Bank and Fortress, along with the other banks and hedge funds that had purchased pieces of the loans.

The suit accused Deutsche Bank of engaging in “predatory lending practices” against Mr. Trump. He sought $3 billion in damages.

This is Trump. He borrows your money and then he sues you for lending it.

Deutsche Bank sued back, calling him a deadbeat and demanding immediate repayment.

Inside Deutsche Bank, angry executives and lawyers vowed to never again do business with Mr. Trump, according to senior executives.

Why didn’t they just seize the building?

Going to court to take over the unfinished skyscraper promised to be a costly, yearslong process, especially given Mr. Trump’s reputation for using the legal system to drag out fights and grind down opponents. It seemed simpler to resolve the dispute.

Who knew it was that easy? Who knew that all you have to do to steal millions from banks is to be a determinedly evil litigious bully?

They settled. The terms were kept secret.

But Mr. Trump’s federal tax returns, as well as loan documents filed in Cook County, Ill., provide clues to what happened: Mr. Trump was let off the hook for about $270 million. It was the type of generous financial break that few American companies or individuals could ever expect to receive, especially without filing for bankruptcy protection.

But Trump gets to do it because he’s such a crook. The secret to success is to be showily, conspicuously, brazenly evil.

Before Mr. Trump defaulted, Fortress had expected to receive more than $300 million from his company: the $130 million in principal and roughly $185 million in anticipated interest and fees.

But Fortress and its partners — including Mr. Mnuchin’s Dune Capital, as well as Cerberus Capital Management, whose co-chief executive, Stephen A. Feinberg, would become a major Trump fund-raiser and go on to lead a White House advisory panel — quickly realized they wouldn’t ever collect that full amount.

Two of the people Trump cheated out of millions now help him do his Trump thing to the whole country. It’s mind-boggling.

It’s so impressive when men who say they are lifelong feminists announce that men are women if they say they are, and that they will block any stupid obstinate women who disagree.

It’s not his call though. He can swear he’s been a feminist since his first breath, but if he feels it necessary to say that men who “identify as” women are women and that he won’t listen to dissent…then I’m not going to believe him about the being a feminist part.

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on You’re going to have to.

What exactly do “nonbinary” people believe themselves to be? They are still men or women, male or female, aren’t they? They can’t be “neither.” If they’re rejecting the stereotypical, sexist roles that society has historically tried to box men and women into, then bravo, they can knock themselves out. But am I nonbinary because I do not conform to many of the stereotypically masculine, sexist, gendered preferences and behaviours that patriarchal society expects men to adopt? I don’t drive. I don’t follow sports. I don’t drink beer. I do some cooking and housework (though still not half). I consider myself relatively gentle and sensitive (but that’s a judgement best left to those with whom I interact). Does that confer nonbinary status in the current usage? I’m guessing not. For that, I would have to put on a dress.

Jeffrey doesn’t want to smash the gender binary, he just wants to step a little bit outside of it. He doesn’t want to save anyone but himself. He only wants his own personal liberation. How can he be free if he has nothing to be free from? Jeffrey’s exciting, brave, and interesting non-binariness depends upon the rest of us poor bastards being stuck in the dull, cowardly, boring box he’s so cleverly escaped by putting on a bit of lippy and a pair of earrings; by becoming a tourist, visiting the other gendered box. Those of us relegated to binary prison are expected to center and celebrate his heroic eschewal of all we are too thick and stupid to avoid.

These bullies of Edinburgh Labour Students are now whining because their point-hiss at a disobedient woman wasn’t 100% well received.

Wawa we are receiving abuse, targeted harassment, and threats.

How much did they worry about the abuse, targeted harassment, and threats that would likely rain down on Ann Henderson after they posted a “statement” explaining how wicked she is (and contemptuously calling her “Ann” six times, as if she were their servant girl)? Obviously not at all or they wouldn’t have posted it.

The abusive language is extremely damaging – but their language about other people is not damaging at all, or if it is damaging it’s righteously so.

Ohhhhhhhh no I’m not, sunshine. I’m not “going to have” to do anything to or about or with regard to you. I don’t know you, and I don’t recognize any obligation I have toward you just because you say so on Twitter.

no

He gets that because he’s non-binary he’s confusing to people, he says, but we are going to have to respect him. No we’re not. We’re free to ignore him.

You need to see my humanity, he says, you need to respect me and talk to me like a human being.

But I don’t. We don’t. Don’t nobody have to.

He could have argued that people should respect other people by default, in the minimal sense of not being rude or contemptuous for no reason. That would be banal but I wouldn’t dispute it. But instead of doing that he makes it all about him, with dramatic emphasis on the word “me.”

Gender politics is the politics of narcissism.

That’s not ever going to work out.

Awww Donnie wanted to make it that the mean woman (not his actual language) couldn’t sue him for defaming her because he’s Too Important and Federal, and the judge says he can’t.

A federal judge on Tuesday denied the Justice Department’s effort to effectively end a defamation lawsuit against President Donald Trump brought by a longtime magazine columnist who has alleged he raped her in a luxury department store dressing room, paving the way for the case to proceed.

The DOJ had sought to intervene in the case and substitute itself as defendant in the lawsuit filed by E. Jean Carroll, a move that likely would have curbed the proceedings, since the federal government can’t be sued for defamation.

Quite a hail Mary. How could the DOJ be the defendant? It was Don the Grabber who said Carroll lied, and he didn’t say it as part of his job with the government, he said it as the lying grabbing little shit he is.

Shortly after Carroll’s allegations became public, Trump denied them, telling reporters, “She’s not my type,” and accusing Carroll of lying to boost her book sales.

The DOJ has fallen very far under Sessions and Barr but not that far.

In a 61-page opinion, US District Judge Lewis Kaplan ruled that Trump “is not an ’employee of the Government,’ as Congress defined that term,” and therefore the lawsuit isn’t, as the Justice Department argued, against the United States.

This means he can be sued.

The Carroll case is one of a litany of legal threats posed to Trump, many of which are likely to escalate if he loses the presidential election next week.

Fingers crossed.

In his opinion, Kaplan also rejected the Justice Department’s argument that Trump’s statements regarding Carroll were made within the scope of his employment, writing, “while commenting on the operation of government is part of the regular business of the United States, commenting on sexual assault allegations unrelated to the operation of government is not.”

Good to know!

On Tuesday, Carroll said she was gratified by the outcome. “When I spoke out about what Donald Trump did to me in a department store dressing room, I was speaking out against an individual,” she said. “When Donald Trump called me a liar and denied that he had ever met me, he was not speaking on behalf of the United States.”

He was speaking on behalf of his scummy little self.

Once again people lose their damn minds over a long-dead guy who called himself a “prophet.”

Tens of thousands of people have marched through the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka, demanding a boycott of French goods amid a row over France’s tougher stance on radical Islam. They burned an effigy of President Emmanuel Macron, who has defended cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.

Police blocked the marchers from reaching the French embassy. Mr Macron has become a target in several Muslim-majority countries after his defence of French secularism.

Muhammad is gone; he’s been gone for centuries. There are more important things to worry about.

On Monday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan also called for a boycott of French goods. In a televised speech, he said Muslims were now “subjected to a lynch campaign similar to that against Jews in Europe before World War II”. He said “European leaders should tell the French president to stop his hate campaign”.

But there is no lynch campaign. It’s the teacher who was murdered.

Humans: wasting their time on gods and prophets while children go hungry.

The student inquisitors had Kevin Price in their sights a month ago:

Cambridge University Liberal Association (CULA) released a statement last Sunday (27/09) condemning the “shocking and pervasive” transphobia among leading members of the Cambridge Labour Party, including prominent councillors.

“Liberal”! Ha!

The statement accuses the Cambridge Labour Party, who currently control Cambridge City Council, of “tolerating a stream of transphobia by leading members of its council group.”

CULA particularly highlights that the Labour Party have failed “to take action against former Cambridge Deputy Leader, Councillor Kevin Price, who has been regularly retweeting anti-trans content for at least six months.”

Except of course the content is not “anti-trans,” it’s pro-truth.

Price has retweeted accounts which call trans people “fetishists” and describe the phrase ‘transwomen are women’ as a “mindless cult statement.”

That’s because it is. Trans women are in fact men, men who say they “feel like” women or “identify as” women. That’s what the label “trans women” means. It is both mindless and cultish to insist that they are also women, literally women, women in fact as well as fantasy.

Similarly to Price’s endorsing of transphobic tweets, Labour councillor Carina O’Reilly in June tweeted the following: “‘Woman’ is not a costume. ‘Woman’ is not an idea in a man’s head. ‘Woman’ is not a pink brain.”

And? It’s the truth, after all. The word “woman” is not any of those things.

A CULA press release also outlined that Price has liked tweets promoting a crowdfunder created by former Cambridge Labour councillor, Ann Sinnott, “which seeks to challenge the right of trans women to access women’s spaces and services.” The crowdfunder, at the time of publication, has raised over £40,000.

And? Women need women-only spaces, and trans women should not try to force women to share those spaces.

CULA condemned “the failure of the Labour group to stand with the trans community”, commenting that “transphobia in Cambridge Labour appears to be rife – permeating every level of the group.”

CULA emphasised that “no action has been taken by the Labour group towards Price or O’Reilly, the former of whom, until recently, occupied a top leadership role before deciding to step down…CULA call on Cambridge Labour to suspend these councillors for their hateful statements which attack the safety of their constituents.”

Liberal! Ha!

James Kirkup has more on the persecution of Kevin Price:

Mr Price is now facing the sort of ‘hostile response’ he spoke about – calls for his employer to dismiss him from his job, because of his thoughts on sex and gender and ultimately, because of his reluctance to say the holy words.

According to Varsity, a student paper, the Union of Clare Students has condemned him and demanded the college authorities act against him. By discussing issues of policy and law at a council meeting, Mr Price had jeopardised the ‘safety’ of the college’s trans and non-binary students, the union suggested in a statement.

Varsity further quotes one Clare student as saying Price is ‘unfit both to hold public office and to be in a position of responsibility over students.’

Now, I didn’t go to Oxbridge and I’m not much for Marxist analysis of society as a class struggle. But I know enough about both to suggest that there’s something both distasteful and revealing about a bunch of Cambridge undergraduates threatening the livelihood of a man employed to serve them because he refuses to share their opinions and adopt their language.

More on those Clare students:

In light of the recent revelations, the Union of Clare Students (UCS) released a statement affirming that “trans people deserve to feel safe and valued within Clare”, and that “our priority is to protect the welfare of Clare’s trans and non-binary community, ensuring that they feel not only safe but also empowered by the College they attend”.

Condemning Price, who is currently continuing his duties at the College, the UCS stated that Price has shown “a brazen contempt for the rights and dignity of trans and non-binary people”. They reassured students that “the UCS and MCR are currently in communication with the College on how best to resolve this situation while centring trans and non-binary students”, and that “the Senior Tutor is meeting with Price personally”.

So the UCS doesn’t pause at lying about Kevin Price. He didn’t show “a brazen contempt” for the rights and dignity of anyone.

The UCS’ LGBT+ Officer Frankie Kendal emphasised that “at Clare, we have a small but vibrant trans and non-binary community that should not only feel safe but feel celebrated”, furthering that for as long as Price continues to perpetuate transphobic views, “trans and non-binary students should not have to interact or rely on him for support in any way”.

In other words he should be fired.

Kendal, who is also a Trans and Non-Binary Rep on the Cambridge SU LGBT+ Campaign, furthermore highlighted that “the handling of this situation highlights that transphobia runs much deeper than a singular Twitter feed”.

Kendal denounced the College’s failure to make students aware of Price’s conduct when his Tweets were unearthed last month, alongside Council members mourning Kevin’s resignation “but not denouncing his transphobia” and “the way CULA used his original comments as a partisan campaigning tool”. Kendal affirmed that all these instances show a continued “failure to centre trans people”, alongside the fact that trans students “are not being prioritised as they should be”.

Why is there a need to “center” trans people? Why should trans students be “prioritized”?

Victoria Longstaff, former SU Women’s Campaign Trans Rep and Clare student, commented that Price is “unfit both to hold public office and to be in a position of responsibility over students” in light of his views. She added that transgender students relying on him in his position as a Clare porter is “a potential risk”, furthering that because of this she “must support either his resignation or his suspension from his duties at the college”.

There you go. Take his job away; ruin his life; persecute him for failure to Center and Prioritize trans people.

It’s disordered personalities run amok.

Now we go from Edinburgh students to Cambridge students:

A Labour councillor of 10 years and former deputy leader at Cambridge City Council has resigned over a motion on transgender rights.

The motion, brought by the Liberal Democrats to a session of the full council on Thursday (October 22), began with the words: “Trans women are women. Trans men are men. Non-binary individuals are non-binary.”

In other words the brainless reality-denying mantra that people are being forced to agree to or be shunned and possibly fired. This situation is grotesque – that people are being forced, on pain of losing their jobs and facing persecution, to say they agree with a stupid reality-denying lie.

The mantra being forced on people is not “Nobody should be shunned or fired or bullied for failing to obey gender stereotypes.” The mantra being forced on people requires them to agree that men are women and women are men. It’s like something out of a crude satire.

The ruling Labour group supported an amended version of the motion, which started with the three same sentences and received majority support.

Kevin Price , who represented King’s Hedges for the Labour party, said he could not support those words, saying they would “send a chill down the spines” of “many women,” and saying it is “foolish to pretend” there are not widely different views or concerns about women’s rights.

He said he has not voted against a Labour motion in his 10 years on the council, and said he did not intend to break that “principle”, and instead announced his resignation to the meeting, saying there are times when conscience “must be weighed against the pull of party”.

He also said that obviously trans rights are human rights.

But he added: “The inclusion of the first three sentences of this motion will send a chill down the spines of the many women who believe there is a conflict of rights and who want to be able to discuss those in a calm and evidenced-based way, as indeed was shown by world rugby in its recent decision to exclude transgender women in those areas of the sport which it controls on the grounds of safety and fairness for women.”

Dude’s been listening. Good man. I wish more would.

He said it is “foolish to pretend that there are not widely differing views in the current debate or that many people, especially women, are [not] concerned about the impact on women’s sex-based rights from changes both in legislation and within society and who fear, not only that those rights are under threat, but that they are unable to raise legitimate questions and concerns without a hostile response. The treatment of Rosie Duffield and JK Rowling has made clear that those concerns are well founded.”

By all accounts he was an excellent councillor, who got things done.

Lib Dem councillor Markus Gehring said: “I feel very sad that Cllr Price had to decide to resign rather than supporting what is a fundamental right, what is a human right for all people. I’m not fully understanding his motivation because I think inclusiveness is all over this motion.”

It is not a fundamental human right to force people to agree that you are what you are not. It was not the Inquisition’s fundamental human right to force Galileo to recant, and it’s not anyone’s fundamental human right to force people to agree that men are women if they say they are.

Then comes an absolute torrent of patronizing stupid:

Labour councillor Dave Baigent said he was in favour of the motion but expressed sympathy for those who struggle with change.

He said: “I respect people and listen to people who have difficulty with change, so I appreciate my comrade who has just resigned from the Labour Party for doing something because he wasn’t prepared to vote against what the Labour Party was suggesting, nor would I.

“That trans men are men and trans women are women is something that comes automatically to me because I have spent 30 to 40 years of my life fighting for people’s equality.”

It’s not about equality. The mantra is not “trans people have a right to equality with everyone else,” the mantra is transwomenarewomen and transmenaremen. Those are different claims; they are different kinds of claims. The first is political or philosophical, the second is ontological.

He said he has seen a range of changes as different groups battled for equality during his lifetime. He added: “It’s a very difficult area when things change in your life and your whole belief system is changed, so I understand people with difficulties over trans change, because I watched in 1965 when people said that black people were equal and people around me just couldn’t believe it, and I found that very hard at that time and I find it hard now that people have difficulty, but people do have difficulty.”

ARRRGGHH. Not the same. Price is not saying trans people are not equal and he’s not “having difficulty” believing trans people are equal. Pay attention.

It’s a damn tragedy that he had to resign.

They’ve found another witch.

The statement via Facebook:

Edinburgh Labour Students strongly condemns the recent behaviour of our University Rector, Labour NEC Equalities Chair and NEC candidate Ann Henderson. There is evidence that Ann attended a Woman’s Place UK meeting two weeks ago, whereby she made a comment implying that the party rulebook should require members to state their birth/legal sex for official party records. Such a comment implies opposition to self-identification as a principle; yet, self-identification is a principle that the Labour Party officially supports.

In August 2018, we reached out to Ann as she failed to comment or respond to concerns from a Labour Party member as to why she followed Woman’s Place UK on twitter. From our statement back in 2018, Woman’s Place: ‘… is a group that has referred to trans youth as mutilated/sexual predators, encouraged educators to treat trans youth as mentally ill and repeatedly referred to trans women as violent men, ‘parasites’ and rapists.’ As well as historically sharing material described as transphobic, Ann’s recent behaviour actively demonstrates a continuation of transphobic behaviour.

Transphobia has no place in the Labour Party. We will continue to do all that we can so that the trans community are not prejudiced against by those in positions of power. As Ann continues to engage in such behaviour, we wish to reiterate that we unequivocally do not support Ann holding office at our University, The University of Edinburgh, nor the Labour Party.

We have reached out to Ann to confirm her attendance and comments during this meeting, and we urge Labour Party members not to vote for Ann in the upcoming NEC elections if we want a Labour Party welcoming of, and inclusive of, the trans community.

Bullying is the new socialism.

Erase erase erase erase.

There’s a Twitter account named FemCare Community Health Initiative. It’s a puzzle that it hasn’t done something about that “Fem” yet, because elsewhere they’ve been scrubbing dutifully.

A menstruator doesn’t menstruate during pregnancy, so is it still virtuous to call her a menstruator?

Stupid menstruator. They’re so incompetent, having all these miscarriages all over the place. Clearly FemCare is the wrong name altogether, it should be MenCare.