Big Sibling is reading your mail.

A teacher and mother-of-three has been questioned under caution by Merseyside Police for sending a letter to Girlguiding UK raising safeguarding concerns.

Ok then, I guess if anyone has any safeguarding concerns about Girlguides UK, she’d better keep them to herself. Sorry girls! You’re on your own.

Her story begins in November 2021 when it emerged that Girlguiding UK had appointed a local commissioner called Monica Sulley, a role that involves overseeing Rainbows, Brownies, Guides and Rangers in Southwell, Nottinghamshire. 

Sulley is a trans woman who posts photos of himself on Instagram…

…wearing dominatrix clothing, one of which was captioned “Now behave yourselves or Mistress will have to punish you #mistress.” She had also posted a picture in which she wielded what appeared to be a fake assault rifle. 

Maybe not ideal for Girlguides then, eh?

The Merseyside woman, who does not wish to be named, wrote two emails expressing safeguarding concerns about the appointment: one to Girlguiding UK, and one to the local Girlguiding organisation in Southwell.

Others also wrote letters.

The woman received a formal acknowledgement of her email from the national organisation, which didn’t address the particular issue she’d raised. She then heard nothing more until 7 January this year, when a police officer came to her house and told her she needed to attend the police station for an interview under caution, which “meant that I could attend voluntarily, but that if I chose not to attend I could be arrested.”

Because she wrote to Girlguides about a man who puts photos of himself as a dominatrix on social media, questioning whether he’s the right person to be overseeing young girls.

I don’t think it’s possible that the people who run Girlguides are unaware that some men prey on young girls – that so many men do this, or some men do it with such dedication, that it’s hard to find a female person who has zero experience of grown men molesting or flashing or otherwise preying on them. Surely it’s a key part of the job of running Girlguides to know this. So why why why are they 1. hiring a man for such a job 2. hiring a man who shows off his creepy kinks in public 3. ignoring public concern at this situation 4. reporting concerned onlookers to the police???

It’s just nuts. Apparently Girlguides now officially doesn’t care about the safety of the girl guides, and does care about the cheeriness of kinky men who want to “supervise” some girl guides, and translates those preferences into reporting critics to the police.

It’s batshit crazy and sinister as fuck.

On 13 January, she was interviewed under caution at Smithdown Lane Police Station in Liverpool. During the interview, which lasted an hour, she was asked about the contents of the email and why she sent it. She was told that she could be charged under the Malicious Communications Act.

Why? Why are women not allowed to air concerns with people in charge of organizations that collect young girls? It’s as if Girlguides has suddenly decided to become an organization of pimps.

She didn’t have difficulty answering the questions, she says: “I’d been a teacher and a mum for years and am old enough to feel certain and confident that there was a breach in safeguarding. I kept referring to the unsuitability of such a person for the role, and that it meant that young girls in this case were threatened, that their safety and privacy were threatened.” 

She also told the police officer that safeguarding rules exist to protect women and girls from the minority of biological males who are predatory. At the prompting of the duty solicitor, she pointed out that when Girl Guides go to camp, they share accommodation and showers, and that “to have male-bodied men in that setting, I believed, was a safeguarding concern.”

Well done duty solicitor.

At the end of the interview, she was told that her case would be sent to the CPS for consideration. Her duty solicitor, she reports, “said he had never been more baffled in his life.” When the solicitor asked the police officer whether it was necessary to proceed to the CPS, the police officer replied, she says, that the email was considered a “hate crime”. 

It’s good to know the duty solicitor was baffled. He’ll have some knowledge of the law, unlike me, so at least I’m not obviously completely wrong about how grotesque all this is.

O rilly?

Who’s this guy? He’s a former Assistant DA for New York state, who prosecuted Trump “university.” He’s probably not just making this up.

I would like to watch him lose everything, and go to prison.

Sarah Ditum reviews Laurie Penny’s new book in the Times.

“This is a story about the choice between feminism and fascism,” Laurie Penny announces in the first line of Sexual Revolution. That’s not true. Actually, it is a story about Laurie Penny, a 35-year-old manic pixie dream person (pronouns they/them) who blundered to public attention as an angry young woman blogging about feminism, went on to chronicle the Occupy movement, and has spent the following years maintaining a white-knuckle grip on whatever the latest trend for the online left happens to be.

Just as the online left itself has, which economically explains why it’s so horrible.

“Fascism” is nothing but a placeholder here for “things Laurie Penny thinks are bad” and the concept of “feminism” is similarly abused. The traditional understanding of it as a movement for women’s rights is, alas, tainted by the fact that only very embarrassing and uncool people would use the word “woman” in its ordinary sense these days. (In Penny’s moral universe, one of the worst criticisms you can make of something is that it’s “embarrassing”.)

So Sexual Revolution cycles through ungainly formulations such as “women and femmes”, “women and queer people”, and “people who can become pregnant”. Roughly translated, these mean “women and anyone who wears make-up”, “women and anyone who claims to be mildly kinky”, and “the people formerly known as women”. In what sense these groupings make a plausible political class is never explained, although it is unlikely that any explanation would improve things.

If only Laurie Penny could write as well as Sarah Ditum…but then she wouldn’t be Laurie Penny any more, because to write that well you have to think that well, and Laurie Penny…doesn’t.

The biggest question left by this book, though, is: “Why?” Penny claims not to be a woman, and claims furthermore that women have no shared qualities as a group, so why identify with feminism at all? Why not leave the politics to the people who know what they’re talking about, and just spend more time doing whatever it is you get up to in Berlin?

Really. Why is a woman who says she’s not a woman writing about the choice between feminism and fascism? What’s it got to do with her? Why should anyone pay attention to her?

Suzanne Moore on Laurie Penny’s attempt to claim oppression by Julie Bindel:

I do find it bizarre how an actual lesbian, à la Bindel, can be criticised by a person (I won’t use the offensive word woman) in a heterosexual marriage to a bloke for putting down “LGBTQ authors”. (I don’t know if said bloke is self-identified as a bloke, and care even less.) Penny plays as ever to their American audience; Bindel doesn’t play this game at all. She doesn’t have the time; she has actual feminism to do. 

…

I do realise it is very “bio-essentialist” of me to refer to myself being the mother of an actual young person, because the Penny persona depends on being young, tiny, and odd when they is in fact 35 years old and a married, successful adult. 

And here’s the thing: 35 is quite a lot too old to be still thinking of oneself as tiny and odd. Really. You should be getting over that the minute you’re out of high school, and all the way over it by…30? 29? 31? In there somewhere.

These people are increasingly desperate to find some way in which they are not privileged. But now you don’t even have to be gay and suffer the prejudice that goes with it, you can just declare oneself open to possibility. For Penny, it is this whole bollocky queer deal which is an utter confusion between sexual orientation and some contrived notion of innate gender ID. I think it just means they is bi. 

Or, as Moore hinted, it just means she is Special.

Penny is not cis and nor am I. The very idea of one being what other people think you are is an anathema to me. I am my own special creation, yet at the same my body does all sorts of peculiar things I wish it wouldn’t. Blood leaks of out it, milk too, other people have been grown inside it. I have been raped because of it. I am paid less because of it. I am prone to certain illnesses because of it, and I understand had I been born in a different place all sexual pleasure would have been denied to me because of it. 

None of this makes me transphobic, it simply makes me an embodied person. And when Penny speaks of their distress as an anorexic kid, I feel deeply for them. They write fantastically well about it. But feeling unhappy in your body always involves the fantasy of “the other”. That other who feels happy and comfortable in their body. Guess what? I have never met that woman.

This idea of a fit between the inside and the outside is a fantasy for trans people as it is for straight and gay people. It is how it is to be human in a culture of human mirrors.

On the inside everyone is odd.

In short, no one feels the things that others imagine they do. Penny is so invested in defending those they see as outsiders when there is a huge blind spot: women, boring, working-class people. Women who are utterly alienated in ways Penny projects onto her necessary “other”: trans people and sex workers. Who is more “genderqueer” I wonder, Katie Price or Caitlin Jenner?

You know it has become ridiculous when lesbians like Bindel have to kowtow to a white, bourgeois, married woman in the name of what, radicalism? Give over. You cannot misgender someone if you don’t believe in the concept of gender, however suck-ass the business of publishing now is. 

And you can’t be “cis” if you never agreed to the gender rules in the first place.

The Times on the police abuse of Jennifer Swayne:

Jennifer Swayne, 53, was detained for more than 12 hours after placing posters around Newport that made claims about trans women in prisons and said “humans never change sex” and that men in dresses should stay out of women’s spaces.

She accused Gwent police of operating “like the Stasi” after they raided her home and took a book of essays on “the theory and practice of transgendering children”. Edited by Dr Heather Brunskell-Evans, an academic previously no-platformed by university students, the book contends that politics rather than science accounts for the rise in the number of transgender children. Swayne said that police did not say why they took the book, which contained her handwritten notes.

I haven’t seen reports of those posters before; at least these make a little more sense of claims that the posters were about trans issues. Do they make more sense of claims of transphobia? Of course not.

Fair Cop, which campaigns against the criminalisation of free speech, accused Gwent police of “unlawful interference”. Harry Miller, the group’s co-founder who won a landmark legal victory against another force when he was accused of alleged transphobic tweets, said that Gwent police were “out of control”.

Miller claimed that the posters that Swayne put up around the Welsh town were a “political statement” that did not come near the criminal threshold.

I wonder if the Gwent police have ever arrested a male person for misogynist graffiti.

Sarah Phillimore, also of Fair Cop, said that the removal of the book was “concerning” and she awaited a knock on the door by police because she also owned it.

Seriously what possible business can police have seizing an academic book from someone’s bookshelf?

Superintendent Vicki Townsend of Gwent police said: “We’ve received several reports in relation to posters containing offensive material appearing in Newport between October and January. Officers on patrol in Newport saw a woman spraying stickers to two lamp posts.” The force refused to detail the nature of the stickers while the investigation was continuing.

I daresay the Gwent police have received several reports of rape, too, but cops don’t seem to dash into action in quite the same way for rape reports. I get that finding stickers on lampposts is a lot easier than finding solid evidence that Mr X raped Ms Y, but that’s not actually a reason to come down like a ton of bricks on women who put stickers on lampposts.

Swayne said they were posters she had made at home. Phrases included “no child is born in the wrong body, humans never change sex”; “respect women’s spaces”; and “Woman = Adult Human Female”. Her other posters said that women were in danger in prisons from transgender sex offenders and called for “no men in women’s prisons”. One asked: “Are you happy for your 13-year-old daughter to shower next to an adult man, yes or no?”

Imagine being a cop strolling around Newport and seeing a bunch of anti-racism posters on lampposts. Would it seem like a good idea to pounce on the first person you saw putting up anti-racism posters? No? What if the force had received “several complaints” from racists? Then would it become a matter of urgency? Just wondering.

Swayne said that police did not tell her why they had taken the transgender book — a collection of essays entitled Transgender Children and Young People: Born in Your Own Body.

Brunskell-Evans, who edited the book, said that the police appeared to be operating within a “very narrow, partisan view of what it is legitimate to have on your bookshelf”.

“That is dangerous for liberal democracy. A book that has been published, is in the public domain and has been for years, and does not break the law in any way whatsoever, should be of no concern to the police.”

We’re allowed to read books. We’re allowed to have books on our shelves. We don’t have to ask the police for permission first.

Gwent police said it had received six complaints about offensive posters. The force said that it was required to respond when members of the public reported they were offended by posters.

Wait. What does “respond” mean? Respond to what? Respond by arresting the first person they see putting up posters? But the complaints are necessarily about other posters, ones that were already there, not new ones that are being put up after the police got the complaints. How can they know the complaints would apply to new posters that didn’t exist when the complaints were made?

Gwent police said that it had put out a public safety message a few days before the arrest because it had been reported that stickers had “sharp objects” attached behind them.

Finally a news source manages to say “it had been reported that” instead of just reporting it themselves. Apparently this basic journalistic caution is unknown to the BBC.

The BBC also did a sloppy lazy story yesterday on how the Newport police abused a woman for putting stickers on lampposts. Some of the wording is identical to that of the trainee reporter for the South Wales Argus; I don’t know if one copied the other (or which came first) or they both drew from another source. Anyway it’s bad and insidious crap.

A 53-year-old woman has been arrested after stickers were placed around a city “directed towards the transgender community”.

A sloppy lazy unsupported claim right in the lede. Who says that’s how the stickers were “directed”? Why say that in the lede when in fact the stickers don’t mention “the transgender community”? Why tilt the story so heavily right at the beginning when there is zero evidence for what you’re claiming?

Also stop calling people you’re nannying a “community” while you don’t call people you’re throwing under the bus a “community.” What about the women’s community, eh? Why don’t we get the kid gloves “community” treatment? You could add the disabled “community” too while you’re at it.

The public has been advised not to remove posters in Newport after sharp objects had been found behind them.

That’s a claim, not a fact. The BBC should not be reporting it as a fact. The police should not be reporting it as a fact. The source of the claim seems to be one frothing trans “activist” in Cardiff who brags about his exploits on Twitter.

“This public safety message was intended to make the public aware of the dangers of potentially removing a poster, after glass and pins had been stuck behind the posters,” said Supt Vicki Townsend.

“We would reiterate that if anyone finds such a poster that they leave it to the relevant authority to remove it safely rather than risk injury.”

Is Townsend telling us that the police found glass and pins? Or does she mean this guy in Cardiff told them that he found glass and pins. I think it’s the latter.

Gwent Police said it was aware of a yellow sticker on social media which states “3+ women are killed by men each week” and “domestic violence kills”.

It said the 53-year-old woman from Newport was not arrested in relation to this sticker and its contents.

The force said it could not confirm the content of the stickers, as this falls into an active investigation, but said “the content of the stickers is directed towards the transgender community”.

I don’t believe them.

A guy in India has set out to persuade men to stop treating women’s bodies as swear-words.

The speaker, Sunil Jaglan, begins with a question, “Raise your hand if you have used cuss words that name mother’s, sister’s or women’s intimate body parts?”

People smile sheepishly, looking around for moral support before awkwardly raising their hands, “Everyone here has used gaali, sir, this is normal,” says one man.

…

“But, is it right?” asks Jaglan.

To this, the women shout: “Of course not! Why target us or our body in your slurs? Why don’t people understand when they use misogynist profanities they actually target their own mothers and sisters? Is this what we are teaching our kids?”

Yes, it is, and it’s what most people are teaching their kids.

Jaglan has since gone from village to village to spread the word, rapidly gaining support from women fed up with a culture of sexist slurs.

…

“It is difficult for males who don’t like to listen to womenfolk. India is a patriarchal society and such things are expected, but we are also determined to fight back,” says 19-year-old volunteer Anjali from Sarmathla village, who is at studying Haryana University.

But everywhere is a patriarchal society. India does seem particularly bad in some ways, but misogyny is global.

The UK is another country where it’s quite normal to insult people by calling them slang words for the female genitalia. Even feminists call people cunts and twats.

It’s not pro-life, it’s anti-women. The pregnancy is everything, the woman whose pregnancy it is is nothing.

The family of a Polish woman who died on Tuesday after doctors refused to perform an abortion when the foetus’s heart stopped beating have accused the government of having “blood on their hands”.

The woman, identified only as Agnieszka T, was said to have been in the first trimester of a twin pregnancy when she was admitted to the Blessed Virgin Mary hospital in Częstochowa on 21 December. Her death comes a year after Poland introduced one of the most restrictive abortion laws in Europe.

Don’t go to hospitals named The Blessed Virgin Mary if you can possibly help it. Try to make sure in advance that you can help it – find a secular hospital.

The first foetus died in the womb on 23 December, but doctors refused to remove it, quoting the current abortion legislation, and Agnieszka’s family claim “her state quickly deteriorated”. The hospital waited until the heartbeat of the second twin also stopped a week later, and then waited a further two days before terminating the pregnancy on 31 December.

That’s just murder. She had a decaying corpse inside her. Refusing to remove it is murder.

Her death follows that of a woman known as Izabela last September, who died after being denied medical intervention when her waters broke in the 22nd week of her pregnancy. Her family claim the 30-year-old was denied an abortion or caesarean section and that the hospital cited the country’s abortion laws. An investigation found “medical malpractice” led to Izabela’s death and the hospital was fined.

It’s Savita Halappanavar all over again.

Just as you can’t “cut ties” with the Supreme Court.

It’s very Trumpy to say you’re cutting ties with a supervisory board you can’t cut ties with.

Libby Brooks at the Guardian has more:

The UK’s equalities watchdog has written to the Scottish government asking it to pause plans to simplify the legal requirements for gender recognition.

LGBT+ equality campaigners hit back at the unexpected intervention by the Equality and Human Rights Commission, describing its approach as “deeply troubling” and “failing to stand up for equality for trans people”.

That is they reacted; they didn’t hit anyone. I do wish UK journalists would drop this “hit out/hit back” rhetoric, it sounds so childish.

The EHRC, which monitors equality and human rights across England, Scotland and Wales, told Shona Robison, the minister responsible for the reforms, that “more detailed consideration” was required.

…

The letter, sent from ECHR chair, Baroness Kishwer Falkner, to Robison on Wednesday afternoon, raised concern “at the polarised debate” around transgender law reform.

Kishwer Falkner wrote that “some lawyers, academics, data users and others have increasingly expressed concerns about the potential implications of changing the current criteria for obtaining a Gender Recognition Certificate”.

“The potential consequences include those relating to the collection and use of data, participation and drug testing in competitive sport, measures to address barriers facing women, and practices within the criminal justice system, inter alia”.

You know, little things, like measures to address barriers facing women.

More indignation.

These organizations don’t seem to have paused to ask themselves what human rights are, ever at any time. The result is that they end up sounding like small children who think they have a “right” to all the ice cream they want right now this second.

Rights aren’t simple. They’re not a matter of just “I want this therefore I have a right to it.” They have to be judged on the basis of their impact on other people. They’re a balancing act. The T+ people seem to think it’s just a matter of demands.

Stonewall responds to the EHRC:

Today’s statements from the EHRC are an attack on trans equality and undermine EHRC’s core purpose of regulating, promoting and upholding human rights.

What is trans equality? What does that mean? In what way do trans people not have equality? It’s not part of “equality” to identify as something you’re not and then force the world to accept your self-identification.

The two statements – in response to plans to legislate for a ban on conversion therapy in England and Wales, and Gender Recognition Act reform in Scotland – effectively seek to exclude trans people from improved rights and protections. 

But the putative conversion therapy isn’t conversion therapy, and it’s not a right for people to identify as other people and take all their rights.

We are deeply troubled by the approach that the EHRC is taking to trans people’s human rights. Their approach appears to focus on pleasing a noisy minority of anti-trans activists, rather than promoting human rights for all LGBTQ+ people. 

But the “trans people’s human rights” in question aren’t rights. They impinge on other people’s rights, and they’re not a defensible right in themselves.

The EHRC is also a UN-accredited National Human Rights Institution, and as such is expected to operate according to the ‘Paris Principles’, which include the commitment to promote and protect all human rights and to contribute towards a world where everyone, everywhere fully enjoys their rights.     

Women can’t fully enjoy our rights if men are given “rights” to usurp our spaces and sports and jobs and prizes.

UN Women on Twitter is so stupid.

I’ve “called out” @UN_Women’s sexist behavior several times. Fat lot of good it did me.

Only yesterday they behaved sexistly.

No, why we fight is not the same “no matter what our gender is.” If you say it is you’re saying there’s no need for feminism, and that, given the realities, is intensely sexist. Tell women in Afghanistan that “why we fight is the same.”

We want sex equality. “Gender” has become a tool for sneaking men in through the back door.

Am I? Even if I don’t agree that men can be women?

Femicide Census has written an open letter to Gwent Police.

Dear Chief Constable Pam Kelly and Superintendent Vicki Townsend,

Two women at the top, supervising cops who arrest and abuse a woman for posting feminist material.

We write from the Femicide Census, the UK’s only resource documenting the number of women killed by men. Our research has been used by the Home Office and the police, for example, when state bodies need to cite data on women killed by men. This is because the UK government and state agencies fail to collate this data.

Why? Why do they fail or refuse to collate the data? I’d be interested to know.

On 25 January 2022 we were alerted via Twitter to an incident where we understand a woman was arrested by Gwent police for ‘displaying threatening or abusive writing likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress’ after putting up posters, referred to by Superintendent Vicki Townsend as ‘offensive material’. In particular our attention was drawn to one poster that read ‘3+ KILLED BY MEN EACH WEEK – DOMESTIC VIOLENCE KILLS.’

It is unclear from communications from Gwent police why that particular poster that contains this statement constitutes ‘offensive material’ or is ‘threatening or abusive writing likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress’. However, it is of great concern to us if this statement has led to an arrest, both for the woman concerned and as well as our organisation and all the journalists and other bodies that use our data, which effectively states the same thing: that women are killed by men.

And you know what? It’s also of concern to us that Gwent police are being so cagey and evasive about it.

All of our data is based on FOI requests to every police force in the country including your own. Gwent police have responded to our request every time. This is why we know that 85 women were killed by men in Wales from 2009 – 2020, 53 killed by a partner or former partner and at least 16 women were killed by men in the area covered by Gwent police alone. We should also point out that thankfully, not one trans person has been killed in Wales over the past 12 years since our data set began.

We are at a loss to understand why the true nature of men’s fatal violence against women could constitute ‘offensive material’ by stating facts of that violence. And particularly given these facts have been used nationally by the College of Policing and the National Police Chiefs’ Council in its own violence against women and girls delivery framework that Gwent police itself should be implementing.

I have a wild guess about why the police pretend to think the true nature of men’s fatal violence against women could constitute ‘offensive material.’ My guess is that they think, or pretend to think, that the next step is to remind us that trans women are men, and that thus trans women are potentially a threat to women if they’re allowed to share certain kinds of private spaces with women. In other words we’re not supposed to remind the world of male violence against women now because it might remind people that trans women are not automatically guaranteed safe in women’s private spaces. Don’t Mention The Male Violence lest it remind people that trans women are men. Men’s validation is infinitely more important than women’s survival.

It is crucial that women identify and name the violence than men perpetrate against us. It is women mobilising against men’s violence against women who have led the global movement against sexual and domestic violence and abuse, including prostitution, FGM, stalking, image-based abuse and femicide.  Men’s violence against women includes harassment and causes alarm and distress to women. We ask you to focus your attention on the perpetrators of men’s violence against women rather than the women who campaign against it.

Do we think Gwent Police will respond? Nope. We think they’ll ignore it as they ignore all of us.

And so the incompetent hacks (unless, worse, they’re doing it on purpose) roll up to spread the malevolent lies. A “trainee community reporter” in the South Wales Argus:

GWENT Police have issued a plea to people in Newport to not remove any posters they see in the city – after sharp objects were found behind some.

No they weren’t. Someone claimed they were, and the police took the claim seriously, or pretended to.

The warning comes as a 53-year-old woman was arrested on Sunday, January 23 after being caught spraying stickers to two lampposts by patrolling police officers.

Lampposts that, as I understand it, are already covered in stickers. (Also you can’t “spray” them. The police said they were “sprayed” and trainee reporter simply repeated the nonsense.)

Superintendent Vicki Townsend said that the force had been receiving complaints about offensive posters since October and that on a search of the woman’s home, more stickers and posters were found.

We’re supposed to conclude that the stickers and posters that “were found” are offensive or worse, but it’s merely insinuated, so that the reporter and the paper can wriggle out of any libel accusations. It’s utterly disgusting reporting.

The nature of the posters has not been disclosed.

Then don’t insinuate that they were somehow evil.

The woman was arrested on suspicion of criminal damage and displaying threatening or abusive writing likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress.

Except that second “on suspicion” is completely bogus. We’ve seen the posters in question and they don’t contain “threatening or abusive writing.” This stupid (at best, malicious at worst) trainee reporter is doing her best to malign Jennifer Swayne by repeating the police lies.

Superintendent Townsend said: “We’ve received several reports in relation to posters containing offensive material appearing in Newport between October and January.”

She continued: “We published a post on one of our Twitter accounts on Friday 21 January, asking the public to not remove posters, including those containing offensive material, in the city after sharp objects had been found behind them.”

Except they weren’t found. Were they? Has that changed? Have the police said “Yes we ourselves found sharp objects behind them?” Last I heard they hadn’t, they were simply sharing what someone told them, the someone quite possibly being that one goon who has been Twitter-bragging about spreading this bullshit.

The trainee reporter a couple of hours ago:

Guest post by Jon Gallant

Our increasingly woke life in the arts and sciences and in the groves of academe includes sanctification of membership (or claimed membership) in certain favored sub-populations.  In New Zealand, for one example, the Aukland artist Peter Robinson has built his career half-seriously as a Maori artist—out of a Maori inheritance of 3.125%, a single great-great-great-grandparent.  At the University of Saskatchewan, Prof. Carrie Bourassa (who sometimes presented herself as “Morning Star Bear”) has become an influential figure in “indigenous” Canada, based on a Metis grandfather who had, it turns out, as much reality as the tooth fairy, Santa Claus, and Buraq, Mohammed’s flying horse.  I propose to follow a similar path, but one a little more realistic than that used by Professor Morning Star Bear.             

Most European members of the Homo sapiens species, which includes me, have in their genomes between 1.5% and 3.5% sequences that come from the sub-species of Homo neanderthalensis.  This is roughly comparable to Peter Robinson’s Maori inheritance, and much more than the 0.00% Metis ancestry enjoyed by Professor Bear.   
   

Therefore, I hereby identify myself a member of the Neanderthal Community. We have been oppressed and “othered” by the dominant group for too long!  Henceforth, I expect at all times to be addressed by the Neanderthal personal pronouns ᚼᛅᛚᛚᚬ and ᛘᛁᛏᚴᛅᚱ, and I will complain to the HR Office about any failure to do so. I will lodge complaints in the DEI Office about every use of “Neanderthal” as noun or adjective to mean backward: this flagrant microaggression marginalizes the Neanderthal part of my genome, and makes it feel unsafe.  
   

Needless to say, we need the formation of a Neanderthal “affinity group” at the university, where that part of our genomes can get together to compare grievances and micro-grievances.  I look forward to the insertion of Neanderthal wisdom into every academic curriculum, especially in STEM fields where the Neanderthal Way of Knowing is most urgently needed.  Since Neanderthal sequences constitute only a fraction of its bearers’ genomes, our abbreviation is ΦN and should be thus abbreviated in the relevant acronyms, such as BIPOC ΦN  and  LGBTQIX+ ΦN.  
   

Finally, I will petition my own University to establish a program in Neanderthal Studies.  Or rather, a full department, a Center, and a scholarly journal for research in Critical Neanderthal Studies.  An ample budget for the department and the Center and the journal will be required, but we can be sure the university administration will find the cash.    Yours in  ᛗᛁᛞᚷᚨᚱᛞ,  Jon Gallant (at least 3.125% Neanderthal)

Meanwhile –

A surprise? Why? It’s women they hate.

“Cute” characters who don’t suggest trans people in any way, thus promoting the happy-clappy fiction that trans people just need to be Who They Really Are (which is a cute anime character).

Gwent police have issued a statement about their ludicrous and abusive arrest of Jennifer Swayne on Sunday.

Statement following a 53-year-old woman from Newport being arrested on suspicion of criminal damage and displaying threatening or abusive writing likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress.

But there was no reason for “suspicion of displaying threatening or abusive writing.” All they had to do was look.

I don’t think it’s normal police practice to arrest people for putting posters on lampposts. I think they give tickets or citations; I don’t think they haul people off to jail.

Superintendent Vicki Townsend said:

“We’ve received several reports in relation to posters containing offensive material appearing in Newport between October and January.

“Officers on patrol in Newport saw a woman spraying stickers to two lampposts.

“A 53-year-old woman from Newport was arrested on suspicion of criminal damage and displaying threatening or abusive writing likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress.”

I don’t believe that. I think the bit about suspicion of threatening or abusive writing is a stupid lie.

“The woman was arrested at 2.39pm on Sunday 23 January and was released from custody after interview at 3.23am on Monday 24 January.

Why? Why hold her for 11 hours and release her in the middle of the night? Why not book her and release her immediately? She wasn’t suspected of murder or rape or assault – why hold her until 3:30 in the morning? How fucking stupid are the Gwent police?

“While she was in custody, a mobile phone and stickers were seized as part of our enquiries.

“Following arrest, officers attended the women’s address and conducted a search after arrest. Further items, including stickers and posters, were also seized.

Why? They’d had time to look at the posters by then; why did they go looking for more innocuous posters? Why did they treat a smoky ashtray like a five-alarm fire?

“While [the woman was] in custody, a healthcare professional assessed the woman at 7.10pm and requested officers collect her medication from her address.

“A quantity of medication was brought into custody by officers at 10.23pm after attending her address.

“The healthcare professional was unable to prescribe it while in custody for safety reasons.”

She didn’t need to “prescribe” it, she needed to hand it over to its owner.

“The woman was released from custody in accordance with police guidelines and there was no legal reason to keep her in the custody unit after her interview.

“The custody sergeant spoke to the woman who did raise that her mobile phone had been taken and she was informed it had been seized as part of the investigation.”

“The investigation” of nothing. There was no crime so the cops had no business stealing her phone.

“Upon release, the woman was offered transport for both herself and her mobility scooter but declined and chose to make her own way home.”

I don’t believe that.

“We published a post on one of Twitter accounts on Friday 21 January, asking the public to not remove posters, including those containing offensive material, in the city after sharp objects had been found behind them.

“This public safety message was intended to make the public aware of the dangers of potentially removing a poster, after glass and pins had been stuck behind the posters.

“We would reiterate that if anyone finds such a poster that they leave it to the relevant authority to remove it safely rather than risk injury.”

I don’t believe that either. There’s apparently a malicious agent claiming there are posters with glass, pins, Novichok, nuclear bombs under posters,, but it’s a pack of lies.

Just disgusting.

Here’s a piece of good news at last – racial gerrymandering is racial gerrymandering.

Alabama Republicans illegally discriminated against Black voters when they drew the state’s seven new congressional districts last year and must quickly redraw the plan, a federal court has ruled.

The ruling is hugely consequential, a blunt assessment of the way lawmakers use their power to draw district lines to dilute the influence of Black and other minority voters.

Pending lawsuits in North Carolina and Texas similarly allege that lawmakers illegally drew districts on the basis of race.

It sounds as if this could be the undoing of the Shelby ruling. Unless of course the Supremes get involved.

The seventh congressional district in Alabama, which stretches from Birmingham to the rural Black Belt, has consistently elected a Black Democrat to Congress for 30 years. Nearly 56% of the voting-age population in the district is Black. The state’s other six districts have all been represented by white Republicans.

The plaintiffs in the case, including four voters, two state senators and several civil rights groups, argued that Alabama Republicans packed as many Black voters into the district as possible – about a third of Alabama’s Black population – in order to weaken their influence in other district across the state.

Let’s hope the ruling stands.

It seems like such a self-immolating way to sell one’s new book.

Eye roll. Of course Julie Bindel didn’t make “a huge fuss.” Laurie Penny, on the other hand…

They’re not a priority for her, but they are, but she wouldn’t want to make anyone feel coerced, but she would, but everyone should take responsibility for their own use of language, but everyone should also obey orders to remember specialty pronouns.

And then she has the nerve to claim that not using her specialty pronouns will “hurt” her. Please. Of course it won’t hurt her – it will give her that little thrill she seeks of being pretend-persecuted. And who comes across as more selfish and petty here? Does she really think it’s Julie?

Well, no, because…

Ooops.

Man writing about Lia Thomas in the Times pretends not to know what everyone knows:

So much is open to interpretation each time Thomas jumps into the pool. She is a transgender woman, and has excelled this season while competing on the women’s team. She owns the best marks in the nation among college swimmers in the 200 and 500 freestyle, but for some, her success has also set two pillars of the sporting ethos — inclusion and fair play — in conflict.

So little is open to interpretation if you’re not being dishonest. Thomas is a man, so of course he “has excelled” while competing on the women’s team. He’s excelled by cheating.

Thomas has become a red-meat topic for right-wing media, a divisive matter for L.G.B.T.Q. advocates and a thorny subject for competitors as well as the N.C.A.A. and other sports governing bodies, who are trying to chart a path for athletes who do not fit neatly into the sex classifications used in most sports.

Who says Thomas doesn’t fit neatly into the sex classifications used in most sports? Besides Thomas? He fits plenty neatly into the male classification from what I can see and have read.

While there have been an increasing number of transgender athletes who have transitioned while in college, the ones who generate the most attention (and criticism) are transgender women who compete in women’s events — and who win.

Yes, and they get the most criticism because they’re giving themselves a massive physical advantage. It’s very simple if you’re not pretending not to understand.

[T]he Ivy League championships lie ahead next month and then the N.C.A.A. championships arrive in March. That will almost assuredly raise the temperature again, as has happened when iconic figures like Michael Phelps, who is making a second career as a mental health advocate, and Martina Navratilova, a champion of L.B.G.T.Q. rights, questioned whether Thomas should compete on a women’s team.

Others, meanwhile, will wonder when the discussion will be centered less on the winner than on the human being.

What about the female human beings who are being cheated by William Thomas? Can we center the discussion on them?

And so if there was something enduring about Saturday, it was not the two races that Thomas comfortably won or the two relays where she gamely tried. It was the way she carried herself in the water — head down, with grace and ease.

Bros before hos.