John Cleese terfing like a boss.

Trump wants to control what we are allowed to know.

The Trump administration escalated pressure on the Smithsonian this week, threatening to withhold federal funds if it does not submit extensive documentation for a sweeping content review. President Donald Trump earlier this year set out to purge what he called “improper ideology” from the nation’s most prestigious museum system, efforts that are expected to intensify as his administration tries to shape the country’s 250th anniversary celebrations next year.

Ah yes improper ideology, meaning history that Trump doesn’t want to hear about and doesn’t want us to hear about.

In a staff email obtained by The Washington Post, sent Friday evening after the funding threat, Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie G. Bunch III said the Smithsonian had sent information to the White House in September and intended to submit more that day. He asserted that “all content, programming, and curatorial decisions are made by the Smithsonian.”

Well it sounds as if Trump is going to change that.

“Funds apportioned for the Smithsonian Institution are only available for use in a manner consistent with Executive Order 14253 ‘Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,’ and the fulfillment of the requests set forth in our Aug. 12, 2025 letter,” Haley and Vought wrote. The letter specifically referenced the Museum of American History, the Museum of Natural History, the Air and Space Museum, the Museum of African American History and Culture, the Museum of the American Indian, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Museum of African Art and the National Portrait Gallery.

Trump and his enforcers are not the right people to be “restoring truth and sanity” to anything, let alone to the Smithsonian.

An earlier letter, in August, called for an aggressive review of eight museums to ensure they align with the president’s directive to “celebrate American exceptionalism” and asked the Smithsonian tosubmit all requested materials within 75 days and “begin implementing content corrections” within 120.

It’s very totalitarian, this stuff. Normal presidents, even very conservative ones, don’t do this telling all the government institutions what to do thing – it’s not their job, it’s not their territory, it’s not what they’re hired to do. Trump doesn’t have the authority to do these things, but he’s doing them anyway.

The Trump administration amplified its rhetoric over the summer, with the president posting on social media that the nation’s museums are “essentially, the last remaining segment of ‘WOKE’” and that the Smithsonian is too focused on “how bad Slavery was.” 

Ah. Is that so. How focused is the right amount of focus, I wonder? Should we ignore it entirely? Should we pretend it just plain never happened, and that if it did happen it was a good thing? Do we all wish our grandparents and their grandparents had been enslaved? Do we think that’s a proud bit of our history? Do we buy the old Southern myth that slavery was a good thing for the enslaved?

Trans people must not be used as political punchbag, says Phillipson

Eh? Who is using trans people as any kind of punchbag?

From where I sit it’s much more the other way around – women are constantly and relentlessly pushed around and told to shut up and deprived of our rights by the trans lobby.

Transgender people must not be used as a “political punchbag”, Bridget Phillipson has said, after she was accused of blocking guidance protecting safe spaces for women. The minister for women and equalities said the debate surrounding gender issues should be conducted more responsibly by those in public life.

Ms Phillipson made the remarks after it emerged she was blocking the publication of trans guidance that would force business and public bodies to protect women-only spaces.

In other words she’s using women as a punchbag.

Source currently unknown.

Dude is unfamiliar with the concept of going for a walk.

President Donald Trump told The Wall Street Journal in an interview published Thursday that he takes a higher dose of aspirin than his doctors have recommended, blaming that for the visible hand bruises that have generated renewed questions about his health.

“They say aspirin is good for thinning out the blood, and I don’t want thick blood pouring through my heart,” Trump, 79, said of why he takes a larger dose. “I want nice, thin blood pouring through my heart. Does that make sense?”

“They’d rather have me take the smaller one,” Trump added. “I take the larger one, but I’ve done it for years, and what it does do is it causes bruising.”

Good. Keep doing that. Ignore what the medics advise and act on your own superior wisdom.

Aspirin helps thin the blood, which can prevent clots from forming, but it also comes with the risk of excessive bleeding. In recent years, medical guidelines stopped recommending daily aspirin for many adults because the risks outweigh the benefits, and some suggest halting aspirin therapy entirely when patients are in their 70s.

Dr. Jonathan Reiner, a professor at George Washington University’s School of Medicine and Health Sciences who was a longtime cardiologist for former Vice President Dick Cheney, said the latest updates from Trump and his team raise more questions than they answer.

“It’s uncommon to see that kind of bruising with one aspirin a day,” Reiner said. “My question is, ‘Does the president take any medications that have not been disclosed by the White House?’”

…

Reiner said 325 milligrams of aspirin each day is not a very high dose, but there’s no medical reason to take that much on a daily basis. When someone sprains an ankle, he said, they might get a 325 milligrams of aspirin every four hours, which would be considered a high dose.

“Aspirin has been studied in varied doses, and the reason why 81 milligrams is given to people is that’s the dose which appears to have the best combination of protection from clotting events and bleeding caused by the drug,” Reiner said. “In other words, 325 milligrams increases the bleeding risk but doesn’t increase the efficacy. So we never use that.”

But Trump does, because he knows better.

Trump also addressed steps he has taken to treat other conditions, including swelling in his lower legs that the White House announced in July was due to chronic venous insufficiency — a common condition frequently found in older people.

Trump told the Journal he tried compression socks but “didn’t like them.” He also suggested he was not interested in taking up regular exercise.

“I just don’t like it. It’s boring,” Trump said. “To walk on a treadmill or run on a treadmill for hours and hours like some people do, that’s not for me.”

There it is – there’s the idea so stupid that no one else could have come up with it.

He can’t possibly walk somewhere scenic and interesting, no no, it’s a treadmill or nothing.

Granted there are security issues but other presidents have managed to go for walks or runs all the same. Trump would rather squat in a golf cart than walk 100 yards.

Originally a comment by maddog on Everybody across all.

Stephenson added that she believes in the importance of protecting the rights of all, including trans people, in the debate around single-sex spaces.

“The rights of trans people” with respect to “single-sex spaces” include the right of trans-identified women to access women’s single-sex spaces, and the right of trans-identified men to access men’s single-sex spaces. The waffling term “trans people” allows everyone to interpret Stephenson’s statement as supporting their own particular viewpoint.

If “trans people” means, just as it says, transgender people in general, then Stephenson must be contemplating the two different sexes of trans people: ie., those trans people who are of the male sex, and those who are of the female sex. Transgender people who are actually female are obviously included in the set of people entitled to use women’s single-sex facilities.

However, if Stephenson is using the term “trans people” as an equivocation for “trans women” (ie., men), then Stephenson’s statement is far more concerning. Saying “trans people” when the speaker means only “trans women” (men), is a common obfuscation. It betrays that the real purpose of the transgender agenda is to destroy women’s rights. Transgenderism is a men’s rights movement. The men are the only “trans people” who count. Any women who also happen to be transgender are beneath consideration. Their existence doesn’t even enter into the equation. Women don’t matter, same as ever.

I don’t trust Stephenson’s statement. I think she intends to favor the “rights” of “trans women” (aka, men), to the detriment of and at the expense of women, while ignoring “trans men” altogether, and acting as if they are not “trans people.”

Ok we’re not allowed to throw the front door open to them, but we can open a window in the back.

A transgender row is threatening to tear the Women’s Institute apart.

The National Federation of Women’s Institutes (NFWI), the institute’s umbrella organisation, announced earlier this month it would ban transgender women from becoming members in line with the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling on sex and gender.

But it has now been accused of attempting to “breach the law” by creating “sisterhood” groups that would be open to transgender women.

But transgender women=men, so creating sisterhood is not possible. If you’re a sheep farmer you can’t create sheephood groups that would be open to wolves, because wolves are not sheep and wolves like to eat sheep. On both epistemic and safety grounds, these back door arrangements are not reasonable.

The nationwide network of trans-inclusive groups will allow “all people, including transgender women, to come together to socialise, learn from each other and share their experiences of living as women”.

Men don’t have any experiences of living as women. They can’t; it’s not possible. Why do we have to keep repeating such an obvious and familiar fact. Tigers don’t have any experiences of living as rabbits and men don’t have any experiences of living as women.

Cathy Larkman, of the Women’s Rights Network, told The Times that the plans were “highly disturbing”.

“It’s highly disturbing that there is a cohort of women in the WI who are not only determined to either circumnavigate or completely breach the law but … are also entirely willing to trample over the rights of all the other women in their group to continue admitting men,” she said.

“I suggest these women leave the WI and find a mixed-sex organisation to join instead, where they will be free to prioritise men.”

That. Make your own god damn groups that welcome all genders yadda yadda; just stop hijacking the existing groups that were set up for women and women only.

It’s called stalling.

The government is facing renewed pressure to publish delayed guidance on single-sex spaces after the new chair of the equalities watchdog insisted the document was “legally sound”.

Dr Mary-Ann Stephenson addressed the issue of the guidance after replacing Baroness Falkner of Margravine as head of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) earlier this month.

The EHRC submitted its updated code of practice to Bridget Phillipson, the women and equalities minister, in September. But four months on, the guidance, which will be used by businesses and other organisations to inform their provision of single-sex services such as toilets and changing rooms, is still awaiting ministerial approval.

The government has defended the delay in publication, saying it needed time to properly assess the complex 300-page document.

They might as well say the dog ate their homework. The government has had time, months of it. They just don’t want to, because The Ideology has eaten their brains too.

Rosie Duffield, a former Labour politician who stands as an independent MP after resigning from the party, said in the wake of Stephenson’s comments women’s groups were “furious” about the delay and urged the government to act.

Duffield, who has been a long-time campaigner for female-only spaces and services to remain single sex, told The Times: “As the chair of the EHRC says, the work they have done is comprehensive and legally sound. All the government have to do is implement that and give clear guidance to the organisations who have been waiting for almost five months now.

“They have to abide by the Supreme Court’s ruling and have said they will, so why the huge gap between saying that and acknowledging the work of the EHRC, who have issued clear and straightforward guidance?”

Because they don’t want the trans lobby shouting at them. That’s obviously much more important than women and our pesky rights.

Maya Forstater, chief executive of Sex Matters, which campaigns for single-sex rights, warned that any further delays could land the government in court. She said: “The government seems to be engaged in a frantic search for loopholes in the Supreme Court’s judgment that sex in the Equality Act means biology, not paperwork.

“This is a shameful way to behave. Rather than dragging its feet, the government needs to lay the EHRC guidance before parliament without delay, and moreover ensure all its own policies comply with the law. The government has only two choices: follow the law or change the law. If it continues to prevaricate, it will end up in court.”

But ending up in court is much less scary than being yelled at by Sophie Molly and India Willoughby.

How not to show solidarity.

Minnesota Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan is facing a firestorm of criticism from conservative figures and political commentators after appearing in a hijab during a visit to a Somali market in Minneapolis.

The incident took place at the Karmel Somali Market, where Flanagan—flanked by Somali leaders and speaking in part in Arabic—opened with the greeting “Salam alaikum” and told viewers: “The Somali community is part of the fabric of the state of Minnesota.”

But the hijab is part of the fabric of the oppression and repression of women. Women in Afghanistan and Iran are beaten and imprisoned (or worse) for not wearing the hijab. It’s not a nice cuddly symbol of nice cuddly religion, it’s a concealment and repression of women imposed and violently enforced by men.

I’m pleased to see that I’m not the only one who emphatically insists that trans ideology is indeed an ideology.

Helen Lewis gives the prize to For Women Scotland.

If only people would tell the truth in these discussions, it would save so much time and effort. The endless evasions and concealments just prolong the misery.

THE new head of the UK’s human rights watchdog has said she will “endeavour” to protect trans people amid the ongoing row over access to single-sex spaces.

What does that mean? Protect them how? Nobody is trying to beat trans people up, so what kind of protection do they need? Spell it out!

Mary-Ann Stephenson said she is keen to “uphold the rights of everybody across all protected characteristics”, having taken up her role as Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) chair at the beginning of December despite a campaign to block the appointment.

Which rights?

Spell it out.

It’s not possible, for instance, to protect women’s rights to women-only spaces and women’s prizes and women’s awards and protect men’s “rights” to be treated as women in all circumstances without exception. If that’s the contradiction you’re trying to avoid, you have to spell it out so that everyone can point out you can’t do both. You can’t give men everything that belongs to women without violating the rights of women.

Some trans rights activists had argued that her track record suggested a “history of alignment with organisations and narratives that have contributed to the marginalisation of trans people in the UK”.

Who said that bit in the quotation marks? The Telegraph doesn’t say, so I asked Google, which gave me this article. So who said it? If it’s the Telegraph who said it, right here in this article, why is it in quotation marks? Surely it’s a basic duty of journalism to make that kind of thing clear.

Stephenson added that she believes in the importance of protecting the rights of all, including trans people, in the debate around single-sex spaces.

Well if by “including trans people” you mean protecting their non-existent “rights” to demolish women’s rights, then you can’t possibly protect the rights of all. Obliterating the rights of half the population is not the path to that goal.

She said: “I would say, you know, judge me on what I do. I am really keen, I think it’s really important for the chair of the EHRC to uphold the rights of everybody across all protected characteristics.

“I think it’s really important when we’re looking at this issue around single-sex spaces, to make sure that you also protect the rights of trans people. And yes, I will endeavour to do that.”

You can’t. You can’t. You can’t. Swallow the bitter pill. It is not possible. If you think men who idennify as trans have a right to be in single-sex spaces for women, and you act accordingly, then you will be doing the opposite of protecting the rights of women.

Fucking hell this gets exhausting. Years and years spent telling grown-ass adults they can’t square the circle, and nobody budges. “And yes, I will endeavour to square the circle forever and ever and ever.”

The Government has said it will not be rushed in publishing an updated code of practice which will be used by businesses and other organisations to inform their provision of single and separate-sex services such as toilets and changing rooms.

No doubt because the Government knows you can’t square the circle and doesn’t want to be yelled at. We’re stuck at the red light forever.

The Women’s and Some Men’s Institute.

The Women’s Institute is facing a potential schism after one of its leaders advised members to hold “sisterhood” meetings to get around a ban on transgender women, The Times can reveal.

Funny kind of sisterhood, trying to sneak men into an organization for women.

The suggestion prompted warnings that such a move could mark the end of the 110-year-old female-only network.

Oh stop with the “could” shit. Don’t be ridiculous. It would do that by definition. Of course adding men to the WI would – not could, would – mark the end of the female-only network.

This month the National Federation of Women’s Institutes (NFWI) said it had decided to exclude trans women, males who identify as female, from joining the WI. Its chief executive Melissa Green said the decision had been taken with the “utmost regret and sadness” but insisted the single-sex organisation had no choice after a Supreme Court ruling in April defined “man” and “woman” as referring to biological sex under equality law.

Well phooey on Melissa Green. Men are not women.

The ban has been welcomed by gender-critical WI members who insist people cannot change sex and have previously railed against trans women being allowed to join.

Rude. Cynically, deliberately rude. Men insist or argue, women rail or rant or rage or squawk.

However, an internal “trans inclusion” meeting held via Zoom this month revealed the WI is now facing a split and discussions are under way among other members about defying the trans policy, which will come into effect next April.

The online session was hosted by Angie Leach, co-chair of the Surrey Federation of Women’s Institutes, which represents 8,000 women in WI groups across the county. A recording of the event seen by The Times showed Leach encouraging members to circumvent the ban by allowing trans women to attend the unofficial sisterhood meetings.

Why? Why is it so urgent to get some men into a thing for women?

Other women in the Zoom chat warned that the ban was “divisive and cruel” and would split the WI. Another member said trans allies within the WI were “a bit like a resistance”. Leach agreed that the new rules preventing trans women joining the WI were going to be “hateful”, expressing her distaste at the idea there would be a “hierarchy of women” whereby some were deemed to be more of a woman than others.

Wrong. Men are “deemed” to be zero a woman, by definition, because men are not women just as women are not men. Bucks are not does, stallions are not mares, cocks are not hens, bulls are not cows, men are not women.

Questions questions.

Trump-Kennedy Center says it plans to sue jazz musician who canceled Christmas performance over Trump name change

Well look. Suppose you’re booked to do a performance at a fundraiser for women in Afghanistan, and then after you signed up, the fundraiser is taken over by the Taliban. You would know the funds raised would not be going to women in Afghanistan, wouldn’t you. So, not wanting to fund the Taliban, you would cancel, right?

This is like that. A gig at the Kennedy Center is not the same thing as a gig at the Trump-Kennedy Center.

The Trump-Kennedy Center, led by President Donald Trump’s appointee Richard Grenell, says it is planning to file a $1 million lawsuit “after the holidays” against jazz musician Chuck Redd.

It comes after the artist canceled a Christmas Eve performance after Trump’s name was added to the building’s signage, a spokesperson for the center confirmed to ABC News on Monday.

After, and because. Post hoc ET propter hoc.

The threat to file a $1 million lawsuit was expressed by Grenell, the center’s president, in a letter that was addressed to Redd and obtained by ABC News.

“Your decision to withdraw at the last moment—explicitly in response to the Center’s recent renaming, which honors President Trump’s extraordinary efforts to save this national treasure—is classic intolerance and very costly to a non-profit Arts institution.”

What exactly are Trump’s extraordinary efforts to save this national treasure? Was it in danger of collapse or sliding into the Potomac or being redesigned as a gas station?

More people ditch Trump’s Trump-Kennedy Center.

At least three more events are no longer happening at the Kennedy Center after its board, which was handpicked by President Donald Trump, voted to rename the venue the Trump-Kennedy Center.

New York Dance Company Doug Varone and Dancers announced that they would no longer bring their pre-scheduled performance to the institution in protest of the decision to rename the arts center.

Not simply in protest of the decision to rename the arts center; in protest of Trump’s decision to rename the arts center named after an assassinated president so that it includes Trump along with the assassinated president. It’s about as crassly greedy and callous and just plain dumb as it’s possible to get.

Alabama folk singer Kristy Lee, who was set to perform a free show on Jan. 14, was also among the artists who pulled out. “I won’t lie to you, canceling shows hurts,” she said in a Instagram post last week. “This is how I keep the lights on. But losing my integrity would cost me more than any paycheck. When American history starts getting treated like something you can ban, erase, rename, or rebrand for somebody else’s ego, I can’t stand on that stage and sleep right at night.”

Well said. It’s not just the usual trump vanity and egotism, it’s the tampering with an existing memorial. Next thing you know he’ll be adding a statue of himself whacking a golf ball next to Lincoln in the eponymous memorial.

Oh look, I’m too late.

We must end the scourge of scientific research once and for all.

The Trump administration is breaking up a research center praised as a “crown jewel” of climate research after accusing it of spreading “alarmism” about climate change.

Russell Vought, the director of the White House’s office and management budget, said the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado, would be dismantled under the supervision of the National Science Foundation.

“This facility is one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country,” he wrote in a social media post. “A comprehensive review is underway & any vital activities such as weather research will be moved to another entity or location.”

Excellent. If we don’t do research on climate change, there won’t be any climate change. We make the planet hotter every time we say the words “climate change”.

Roger Pielke Jr, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute thinktank, told USA Today, which first reported the story, that the facility was “a crown jewel of the US scientific enterprise and deserves to be improved not shuttered”.

He added: “If the US is going to be a global leader in the atmospheric sciences, then it cannot afford to make petty and vindictive decisions based on the hot politics of climate change.”

When even the American Enterprise Institute disagrees with you…

The White House has accused the centre of following a “woke direction” and identified several projects that administration officials say are wasteful and frivolous, USA Today reported.

These include a Rising Voices Center for Indigenous and Earth Sciences that seeks to “make the sciences more welcoming, inclusive, and justice-centered”, as well as research into wind turbines, an innovation that Trump has repeatedly denounced.

The administration has already proposed a 30% cut to the funding of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, slashing spending on its climate, weather and ocean laboratories, which work to improve forecasting and better understand weather patterns.

Never mind. We can always look out the window.

The level of detail is impressive.

The White House has installed plaques along President Donald Trump’s “Presidential Walk of Fame,” offering descriptions of his predecessors, often written in the style of his social media posts — including insults, baseless claims and random capitalization.

Nobody asked for a “presidential walk of fame” but he had to slap one up so that he could make his insults and caricatures that little bit more conspicuous.

What’s a walk of fame anyway? Former presidents are already “famous” in some sense, because of being former presidents. What need is there to give them a “walk of fame”? Apart from creating a new way to crap on them, that is, which I guess answers the question. Anyway there’s that thing in Hollywood, so obviously that appeals to prezident pinhead.

A plaque at the front of the exhibit, which lines the walkway outside the West Wing of the White House, says it was “conceived, built, and dedicated” by Trump “as a tribute to past Presidents, good, bad and somewhere in the middle, who served our Country, and gave up so much in so doing.”

Which, being interpreted, means he gave up so much in “serving our Country”.

The plaque for former President Joe Biden, who is represented by a photo of an autopen, leans on familiar Trump grievances. “Sleepy Joe Biden was, by far, the worst President in American History. Taking office as a result of the most corrupt Election ever seen in the United States, Biden oversaw a series of unprecedented disasters that brought our Nation to the brink of destruction,” part of the plaque reads. “But despite it all, President Trump would get Re-Elected in a Landslide, and SAVE AMERICA!”

Sigh.

“The plaques are eloquently written descriptions of each President and the legacy they left behind. As a student of history, many were written directly by the President himself,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told CNN in a statement when asked for more information about who’s paying for them.

No. Eloquently written they are not. Nothing Trump writes is ever eloquent. Nothing. Ever. He has a distinctive style, and it’s a very very bad one. It’s childish and vituperative and vulgar.

Ermmmmm what?

Indiana Senate Majority Floor Leader Chris Garten celebrated Christmas by posting AI-generated images of himself violently attacking Santa Claus in front of the Indiana Statehouse.

Well…I’m sorry to say this, but not Santa Claus – someone in a “Santa Claus” suit. There is no real Santa Claus. (There may be people named Santa Claus. Doesn’t count. You know what I mean.)

That aside, wtf?

In one picture—clearly edited to make him look super muscly—Garten is seen riding bareback on a reindeer with his fist in the air, while supporters stand behind him holding signs rife with AI-induced spelling errors.

As one does.

From President Trump to failed New York gubernatorial candidate Andrew Cuomo, to Garten, so much of our leadership is obsessed with this useless, environmentally detrimental AI-slop. Nevermind the “beating bureaucrat Santa unconscious” message put forth in Garten’s post. Instances like these only further normalize a tool that is directly contributing to humanity’s cultural, psychological, and environmental decay.

Yes but we’re completely out of natural intelligence so it’s AI or nothing.

Originally a comment by Artymorty on Not as familiar.

There’s a bleak irony here that I’ve tried to point out more than once: the loudest champions of gender ideology are often the ones most afraid to actually look at it. “Transphobia” is real and common — it just doesn’t manifest the way we’re told. More often, it takes the form of incuriosity masquerading as virtue. It’s the Ardals of the world — people who don’t know the first thing about the subject — who are phobic in the literal sense: afraid of what they might discover if they examined it too closely.

They haven’t merely absorbed a set of beliefs; they’ve been handed a full epistemic template — a prefab way of slotting “trans” into the social landscape. Activists brute-forced the phenomenon into the moral mould of gay rights and civil rights more broadly, and once that move succeeded, dissent ceased to be merely rude or wrong. It became incomprehensible. They were never taught how to take the story apart. It never occurred to them that it might need taking apart.

Preassembled beliefs. Outsourced judgment. Critical thinking, for Ardal and so many like him, means following the Ikea instructions.

Graham built his own moral framework, guided by principles he actually thought through. It’s not a mystery why they can’t see it — the glass is a one-way mirror. The Dunning–Kruger effect explains the rest.

Graham Linehan points out something I hadn’t realized – some or many defenders of trans ideology haven’t bothered to find out a damn thing about it.

I’ve been here before. I’ve read all the quotes by now, from all the old friends who couldn’t pick up the phone before speaking to the press. Bill Bailey – our secret sauce on Black Books – said he found my stance in supporting women’s rights “baffling”. Amelia Bullmore – one of the things that made Big Train classier than it had any right to be – spoke of the “unfathomable escalation” of me standing against the mutilation of children in gender clinics. They all have their little variations, but the tune is always the same. Baffled. Sorry for me. Can’t understand why I got involved.

“If only he had done it differently,” when they never did it at all.

…

I expected more from Ardal. I never thought he would intone the catechism.

“I still get on great with everyone,” he said in a recent interview with The Times, “though I haven’t seen much of the show’s creator, Graham Linehan, and am baffled as to why he got involved in the culture wars. I feel sorry for him – he’s entitled to his opinions, but the way he presented them made it confrontational.”

When I read that, I phoned him immediately.

When people betray me, I always make the mistake of phoning them straight away. My heart was thumping in my chest as I found his number and gave him a faux-polite, “Hey Ardal, how’s it going?”. My anger was already boiling. I knew exactly what he would say – the exact same things Bill Bailey said when I phoned him, the exact same things Amelia Bullmore said when I wrote to her. I knew, and I phoned anyway, because I can’t help myself. And when he started reading from the same script as all the others, I lost my temper.

At some point, Ardal said, “I just disagree with you.”

I was stunned for a moment. Then I said, “What? You think men should be in women’s prisons? You think children should be mutilated and sterilised? You think men should be in women’s sports?”

“Oh, er, no, I’m not as familiar with the subject as you.”

There. That.

So what is it you disagree with then?

If you don’t know enough about trans ideology to know about men in women’s sports and children being mutilated and sterilized then SHUT UP.

I mean honestly. What next? Slavery wasn’t so bad, unless you know about the lifetime of unpaid labor, the separation of families, the rapes and whippings, the inability to quit or leave or say no. Torture isn’t so bad unless you know what it is. War isn’t so bad as long as it’s thousands of miles away.

This is what we in the fight have come to call the Bananarama defence – “It ain’t what you do, it’s the way that you do it.” It’s never what we say, it’s the terrible, awful, confrontational way we say it.

…

We hear the Bananarama defence constantly, almost always from people who have never said a word about the subject. They won’t know the first thing about puberty blockers. They couldn’t name a single safeguarding failure resulting from the idea that a group of self-selecting men are actually women. They haven’t followed the debate at all, because they know it’s more than their career is worth to pay attention. But they’re very confident that I went about addressing it in the wrong way.

If you don’t know anything about it then shut up.

Ardal didn’t seem to have read my memoir. Possibly for the same reason he never phoned me over the 10 years in which my life and career were being dismantled by trans activists – anonymous paedophiles on Twitter, homophobic parents who had transed their children, Wikipedia moderators, Guardian journalists.

I’m guessing he hadn’t done any reading on the subject at all. He doesn’t know about the thousands of children permanently harmed in gender clinics like the Tavistock and Boston Children’s Hospital. He doesn’t know that the psychotic Barbie Kardashian can walk into any female-only space in Ireland behind a woman and not be breaking the law until he decides to assault her. He certainly didn’t know that I raised over £20,000 for Vancouver Rape Relief, which had a dead rat nailed to its door by trans activists, or about the millions we’ve raised for women fighting back against this appalling misogyny in the UK and across the world.

No. He just went to the press, said he was baffled, said he felt sorry for me, and went back to doing precisely nothing about the greatest threat to women’s and girls’ rights in over 100 years – and the greatest health disaster for gay people since the Aids crisis.

It’s mystifying.