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.