No see that’s the whole thing right there.
Mushy is saying that being and “living as” are the same thing, and they’re not. In the literal sense, being entails “living as” but Mushy is not using the literal sense, he means that other one. He means he’s pretending to be a woman and therefore is one.
It doesn’t work like that.
Guido Fawkes tells us Jolyon Loses Again.
The Bar Standards Board late last week slapped down a complaint made by Maugham’s Good Law Project against a barrister over her social media posts. Sarah Phillimore is also launching crowdfunded defamation proceedings against Jolyon himself…
The GLP made a complaint on behalf of a trans person after Phillimore referred to them in posts. The Bar Standards Board has said Phillimore “has the right to manifest her gender critical beliefs,” and that her posts were not “either seriously offensive or otherwise a potential breach of CD5 [core duty 5 – upholding public trust] by being harassing, bullying, victimising or discriminating.” Dismissed on all counts…
Meanwhile Jolyon does quite a lot of harassing and bullying himself.
The Jerusalem Post reports:
Pro-Palestinian rally at Buchenwald memorial shut down by German authorities
Team Pro-Palestinian being a little too obvious maybe?
The rally was slated for April 12, marking the 81st anniversary of Buchenwald’s liberation by US troops. But the city of Weimar said on Monday it would ban the event on the memorial grounds.
Marking the 81st anniversary of Buchenwald’s liberation with a rally of people who hate Jews. How inspiring!
German authorities have shut down a planned pro-Palestinian vigil at the Buchenwald Nazi concentration camp memorial after a fierce outcry.
The rally was slated for April 12, marking the 81st anniversary of Buchenwald’s liberation by US troops. But the city of Weimar said on Monday it would ban the event on the memorial grounds and offered a square downtown as an alternate location.
Kufiyas in Buchenwald, the group behind the campaign, announced it was challenging the ban in court. The group said it aimed to “commemorate victims of genocide and fascism” and “uplift the fundamental duty to fight against all genocides, particularly the genocide currently taking place in Palestine.”
Or to put it more crisply, the group said it aimed to make the Jews shut up about their damn death camps and their damn six million murdered Jews.
The planned event had been heavily criticized by German leaders, such as federal antisemitism czar Felix Klein. In an interview with the Jüdische Allgemeine, Klein said he viewed the rally as “disrespectful self-promotion and a perfidious attempt to relativize the murder of over 11,000 Jews in the Buchenwald concentration camp by comparing it to Israel’s actions in the recent Gaza war.”
And that was a mere blip compared to the death camps. A million were murdered at Auschwitz.
How it started:
How it went on:
Originally a comment by Artymorty on There are none.
By gluing the LGB to the T, especially in the context of conversion therapy, PBS has done serious damage to gay rights.
Conversion therapy practices against same-sex attracted people don’t work: sexual orientation is fixed and inborn. Not only do such practices not work, we know that they’re also extremely harmful to patients’ mental health. Obviously, the old-school electroshock-treatment kind was barbaric. But the supposedly “milder” talk-therapy kind is also harmful — extremely so. It’s effectively psychological torture to be told by a supposed professional authority figure that there’s something wrong with you that you need to keep trying to fix, when the cards are stacked against you because in reality, it’s not in your control to change it, and that thing (sexual orientation) is not actually wrong in the first place.
In the field of secular professional therapy, this is all well-established, and the practice of trying to change someone’s sexual orientation is long gone.
But of course, with respect to “gender identity”, the exact opposite is true: in reality, it’s not in your control to change your biological sex or to radically change how others observe and detect your sex, and that thing — your sex — is not actually “wrong” in the first place.
So it very much should be the standard in secular professional therapy to steer kids away from pseudoscientific beliefs about having “wrong” bodies and mismatched “gender identities”. And we know from years of data that such therapy does, in fact, work a lot of the time, and as the therapeutic approaches improve, the rates of effectiveness do, too.
Unlike gay, you can, in fact, therapeutically “cure” trans.
People are right to both push to preserve clinicians’ rights to talk kids out of toxic “gender identities” and simultaneously push to restrict clinicians’ rights to try and talk kids out of their natural sexual orientations or gender-nonconforming expressions of personality.
Like a see-saw, when one side goes up, the other must go down. Problem is, when they get merged together, most people only see one side of the see-saw — the one they’re most preoccupied with — and the effects on the other side are out of view.
When the editors at PBS merge “gender identity” therapy with sexual orientation therapy, the readers who are (rightly) appalled at the thought of gay conversion therapy fail to see the other side of the see-saw, that rightful treatment for “gender”-confused kids is also in play.
But readers who are (also rightly) appalled by the extremism of gender ideology are so eager to see a stop to that, they fail to see the damage done to LGB people when the courts roll back prohibitions on attempted conversion against us.
I ran into this problem early on in my gay rights campaigning on this issue, and I have to confess: I, too, didn’t fully grasp the other side of the see-saw.
A few years ago when Canada’s Parliament was debating a conversion-therapy bill, I was actively involved, and I came close to testifying before the House about it. (I didn’t testify in the end, but I submitted a well-received Brief to the House, and someone who did testify addressed my brief during her testimony and urged the Members to read it.)
At that time, I was in many discussions and meetings with people about the Bill. What I had failed to grasp was that many of my supposed allies in opposing the ban on “trans conversion therapy” were also advocates for gay conversion therapy on religious freedom grounds. They and I were allies on one side of the see-saw — the one about gender identity — but I failed to immediately detect how hostile many of them were to the other side of the equation, how callous they were about the harms conversion therapy does to LGB people.
Over time, I began to see how people’s growing preoccupations with the ban on trans conversion therapy were blinding them to the dangers of re-introducing gay conversion therapy. I’d see people argue, for example, that maybe the “talk therapy” kind of gay conversion therapy isn’t really such a big concession, because it’s not like the bad old days of electroshock treatment and physical torture. That kind of Overton-window shifting, of rationalizing away the erosion of important protections that are vital to young gays and lesbians.
It’s not a coincidence that Colorado’s court case was brought forward by a Christian counselor backed by the Alliance Defending Freedom. Their end-goal is not merely to preserve therapists’ rights to treat “trans” ideation, but to criminalize homosexuality. The ADF are, as far as I’m concerned, the closest analog to the Klan or the Nazis with respect to gays and lesbians. They truly do hate us and they genuinely want homosexuality eradicated.
But it won’t surprise me if I come across a bunch of “gender critical” types celebrating the ADF’s victory, and leaving the LGB side of the see-saw largely out of sight. This may be a victory for the fight against gender ideology, but for gays and lesbians, our rights and protections in Colorado have just swung way, way down.
The blame for this predicament, as I see it, falls on PBS and other media outlets who did the dirty deed of lumping us in with the T in the first place. It was they who muddied the message. They’re the ones who tied our fates together like this.
I hate it so much.
It seems we can never have clarity or precision or accuracy in this discussion now. PBS shows us why right in the headline.
Supreme Court rules against Colorado’s ban on ‘conversion therapy’ for LGBTQ kids | PBS News
But what is conversion therapy for LGBTQ kids? Nothing. It can’t be anything, because those 5 items are not identical. T is not the same as L or G, or L and G. They are, in fact, opposites. L and G are real categories, easily specified. T is a destructive invasive fiction.
I suppose the perceived connection is that some gay men lean girly while others don’t, and some lesbians lean butch while others don’t. Rachel Maddow assures us that her wife wears skirts, never trousers. But…you know…the gap between that and actually being F or M because skirts or trousers is enormous. If Trump rocks up to the camera, takes his ugly blue trousers off, and puts on an ugly blue skirt, he doesn’t then become a woman.
An 8-1 high court majority sided with a Christian counselor who argues the law banning talk therapy violates the First Amendment. The justices agreed that the law raises free speech concerns and sent it back to a lower court to decide if it meets a legal standard that few laws pass.
It’s the latest in a line of recent cases in which the justices have backed claims of religious discrimination while taking a skeptical view of LGBTQ rights.
But, again, they shouldn’t be bundled together. LGB rights are different from purported T rights. (What Q rights are is anyone’s guess.) The right to love, marry, have sex with, raise children with same sex people is not the same as the purported right to be treated as the sex one is not in all circumstances.
Being able to talk sensibly about this subject would be a lot easier if the news media would stop framing it so dishonestly.
Revolting Jolyon Maugham pretends the magic gender ideology is comparable to the anti-Franco side of the Spanish Civil War.
It’s not.
AI version:
“¡No pasarán!” (Spanish for “They shall not pass“) is a famous anti-fascist slogan and rallying cry, most notably used by Dolores Ibárruri (“La Pasionaria”) during the 1936 defense of Madrid in the Spanish Civil War.
Jolyon Maugham is not part of the 1936 defense of Madrid in the Spanish Civil War. Jolyon Maugham is a very naughty boy.
Behold the nonviolence.
Nothing like a scowling man in a balaclava brandishing a hammer to convey total committed nonviolence.
The Sunday Times takes a look at Bash Back:
A militant transgender activist group has issued a “direct action” guide to members, urging them to arm themselves and carry out repeated illegal attacks on MPs and organisations.
The group, known as Bash Back, told activists to form “independent local cells”, “identify a target” — including MPs, organisations and political party conferences — and “ensure your target can be hit repeatedly until they desist” from their “transphobic” activities.
…
The group set out tactics for what it described as direct action, admitting it would be “rarely legal”, and warned participants they could face charges including criminal damage, possession of an offensive weapon and aggravated trespass. The document also included practical advice on carrying out attacks and how to escape detection afterwards.
And yet, they huffily insist they are non-violent.
A promotional image on the document featured the slogan “smash transphobia” alongside a masked figure holding a hammer and an invitation to “choose your weapon”.
Not non-violent. Their silly ploy here is apparently to pretend it’s just property damage they’re inciting, not at all at all physical damage to people. Yeah right.
Bash Back said on its website that its tactics focused on “striking where it hurts” and acknowledged that its methods involved unlawful activity, but said it did not condone violence.
It doesn’t condone it, it incites it.
Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Of character.
This “administration” , more than most, relies on image rather than actuality. We have the example from the top, with Darth Cheeto and his Atomic Combover who lies about his intelligence, health, cognitive ability, and just about everything else. Being “Secretary of War” does not require any personal strength or physical capacity. Looking like you might split a seam at if you bend over or reach for a drink does not make you “tough” or “dangerous”. Nobody thinks you’re going to Hulk out on them because you’re dressing a size smaller than you should. It makes you look like a posturing windbag who thinks appearance is more important than ability. But if you have no ability, the only kind of facade you can present is an empty one.
It seems that Hegseth has to fire everyone who has more talent, skill, knowledge and experience in order to feel secure about himself. That’s a big list of pople. Doing this just before, or during a war, is not really a very good idea. Just ask Stalin. (I suppose we should be greatful that Trump and Hegseth aren’t killing those officers they’re removing.) If all your experts and advisors tell you that going to war is a bad idea, removing them and replacing them all with a staff of yes men is not going to turn it into a good one. It’s only going to make things worse, by turning a bad idea into a poorly executed bad idea.But, purgers gotta purge. If racial purity, male supremacy, and loyalty to the Leader becomes more important than doing your actual job, be prepared to order more body bags.
Yet another gullible twerp mistakes the homemade Lemkin “Institute” for a genuine institute as opposed to someone’s hobby.
It’s not “official”. A pretentious one-person ideology-enforcer is neither official nor an institute. It’s just a very silly bystander.
The Lemkin Institute has described gender critical feminism as “genocidal ideology that seeks the complete eradication of trans identity from around the world”.
Thus demonstrating they’re not a respectable “institute”. Putative identities are not synonymous with life. It’s not genocide to tell men they are not women. Even if it is very painful for the men, it still doesn’t come anywhere near being genocide.
What they’re doing in the sentence is equivocating. They’re pretending that “trans identity” is synonymous with trans existence. They’re pretending that refusal to believe and encourage other people’s fantasies about themselves is the same thing as killing those people. It’s not. It can be cruel, certainly – cruel the way telling people they’re ugly is cruel – but emotional cruelty is still not the same as killing, much less genocide. The people who claim to be the other sex go on existing. Telling men to get out of the women’s locker room is not the same as pushing them into the gas chamber.
In a statement on the issue, the Lemkin Institute argued that rhetoric from anti-trans activists depicting trans women as dangerous were not based on fact, but instead as essential to manufacturing consent for anti-trans violence.
Gender atheists don’t say all trans women are dangerous; we point out that some men are dangerous to women and that’s why no men should be in women’s locker rooms.
In 2022, the Lemkin Institute declared anti-trans legislation in the United States as genocidal.
One, legislation that protects women’s rights is not “anti-trans”; it’s pro-women. Two, legislation that protects women’s rights is not genocidal. Men go right on existing even after being reminded that men are not women.
In November 2024, Joseph Lemkin, a US lawyer who is Raphael Lemkin’s relative stated to Algemeiner Journal that he objected to the Lemkin Institute’s use of the Lemkin name and its use of the word genocide for the Gaza genocide.
The Lemkin Institute is nothing to do with Lemkin; it just helped itself to the name.
In September 2025, Joseph Lemkin told The Algemeiner that his family, with the support of the European Jewish Association (EJA), was considering legal action against the Lemkin Institute over use of Lemkin’s name. The family had previously requested a name change through formal letters and is awaiting a response. The EJA also contacted Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro and the state’s Bureau of Corporations and Charitable Organizations regarding the matter. According to Lemkin, if no action is taken and state officials do not intervene, the case will be brought before a court.
A fad for cross-dressing really has nothing at all to do with genocide. The “official genocide warning” Lismore drivels about is not “official” in any meaningful sense. It’s just one more person blathering.
Slate is angry that men won’t be able to invade women’s Olympic events.
The International Olympic Committee has instituted mandatory sex testing for every single athlete who aims to compete in women’s sports, the organization announced last week. This regressive policy, which will come into play at the 2028 Games in Los Angeles and formally resumes the Olympics’ long and shameful tradition of sex testing women, is effectively a ban on transgender women. That’s ghoulish.
Ghoulish?? Someone needs a dictionary.
But more to the point – it’s not regressive to keep men out of women’s sports. If there were an Olympics for children 10 and under, it wouldn’t be regressive to keep adults out of that Olympics.
Since 2004, when trans athletes first became eligible for the Olympics, there has been just one trans woman who has competed: New Zealand weight lifter Laurel Hubbard, in the 2021 Tokyo Games.
Just one openly trans “woman” that is. Imane Khelif for instance denies being a man.
Athletes believed to be intersex or trans are often subjected to intense, hateful scrutiny by sports governing bodies and the general public. The Algerian boxer Imane Khelif, who won Olympic gold in 2024, was forced to endure a massive global hate campaign, stoked in part by President Donald Trump, who wrongly described her as both transgender and “male.”
How do we know he’s not male? Why, he says so.
The IOC, for its part, would like everyone to know that its policy “does not apply to any grassroots or recreational sports programmes.” That’s a nice thing to say, but it’s not true in any sense but the most literal. While this particular sex-testing policy applies only to women in Olympic settings, it has been well documented that national, state, and local policymakers—even down to youth recreational leagues—take their cues from the IOC and other groups that govern top-tier athletes.
What should they take their cues from? The trans communinny?
So is Trump a god-botherer or no?
No.
White House Faith Advisor Paula White-Cain’s attempt to rehabilitate the president’s religious image during a Fox News appearance backfired spectacularly Saturday night, triggering a wave of mockery after claiming he attended Saturday and Sunday school up to three times a week as a child.
Also, even if he had attended goddy school as a child, that wouldn’t establish that he’s goddy now. I was dragged to church a few times as a child and I hated every second of it. It didn’t make me religious.
White-Cain made the claim during a conversation with Laura Trump, telling Fox viewers that “many people don’t know about the upbringing of President Trump” before adding that he “went to, sometimes, three times a week to, he said, depending on the teacher, to Saturday school, Sunday school, church.”
“Church was a big part of his life,” she insisted.
Church can be a big part of your life in childhood and teach you to dislike religion. Some people change as they get older. Life is complicated.
Trump has leaned heavily into religious imagery during his second term, frequently invoking God’s blessing and surrounding himself with evangelical allies like White-Cain.
Trump has leaned heavily into a lot of things. He’s an eclectic kind of guy, or to put it another way, he’s random.
Hegseth continues his campaign to rid the US military of competent people.
Ousted Army Chief of Staff, Gen. Randy George, told Pentagon officials in an outgoing email that U.S. soldiers deserve “courageous leaders of character,” after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth asked him to step down and take immediate retirement.
CBS News exclusively reported earlier this week on the general’s ousting, with one source saying Hegseth wants someone in the role who will implement his and President Trump’s vision for the Army.
Their vision for the Army is that all brass will wear too-small jackets the way Hegseth does, because he thinks it makes him look muscular as opposed to ridiculous. All the wars will be won in an hour or less!
Hegseth has fired more than a dozen senior military officers, including Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. C.Q. Brown, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti, the Air Force Vice Chief of Staff Gen. James Slife and the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse.
Their jackets fit them too well.
But that’s not the question.
Of course they do. I don’t know of anyone who has said “Trans people are not equal” or “Trans people are inferior”. That’s not where the disagreement is at all. The disagreement is very simple and clear: dissenters from trans ideology do not agree that men can be women or that women can be men. That’s it.
It’s quite a tell that Pink News misrepresents the disagreement this way. It hints at how difficult it is to keep trying to argue that men can be women if they just simper and bat their eyelashes enough.
Of all things he could be doing Trump comes up with re-opening Alcatraz. Bro, it was closed for a reason. It’s a not very big rock just off San Francisco; it’s not a practical site for a prison.
Trump is seeking $152m (£115m) to reopen the infamous Alcatraz prison as part of his proposed budget for the 2027 fiscal year.
Located near San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge, the site, also known as The Rock, was once regarded as one of America’s most notorious prisons, but has served as a tourist attraction in recent years.
The budget request is seeking money “to rebuild Alcatraz as a state-of-the-art secure prison facility”, with funds covering the first year of costs.
What on earth for? It’s a very small island in San Francisco Bay. What’s his point?
I suppose it’s just the usual Stupid Impulse of a Stupid Impulsive Peabrain who wants a new toy.
The maximum security facility was closed in 1963. As a tourist site, it is currently run by the National Park Service.
Maybe that’s it. Trump hates the National Park Service.
Previous criticism of Trump’s plan has pointed to the lack of running water and sewage on the island, and the fact all supplies are required to be brought in by boat.
By the time Alcatraz closed, it was three times more expensive to operate than any other federal prison, according to the US Bureau of Prisons.
Never mind, we’ll just defund Yosemite and the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone. Everybody wins!
Oh, so that’s the plan. Palm the kids off on the grandparents. There’s just one tiny flaw, JD – what makes you think the grandparents will comply?
Make it so that maybe grandma and grandpa wants to help out a little more. How does one do that exactly? How does one arrange or manipulate or disguise the situation such that grandparents who are not currently being daycare for the children will consent to become daycare for the children? “Hi Mom, hi Dad, we want to make it so that you want to help out with our kids a little more, by which we mean take care of them from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. (or more if the commute is bad) five days a week. How can we make it so that you want to do that?”
This rosy question of course assumes that the grands live next door; if there’s a second commute to get the kids to the grands or the grands to the kids then it’s from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Roughly. Could be a little less, could be a little more.
There’s just one tiny snag. If the grands wanted to do this, wouldn’t they be doing it already?
But hey, Vance just said a little of the pressure, so maybe he means that the grands could drop in for an hour on Wednesday afternoons. Of course that assumes they live in the same city or suburb, which is true of some families, but certainly not all of them.
Annnnyway. I’m sure the great minds in the Trump regime will figure it out.
Inside Trump’s recreational sadism:
Trump brutally ended Pam Bondi’s career as his attorney general while they rode in his limousine to the Supreme Court on Wednesday.
“I think it’s time,” Trump told Bondi, The Wall Street Journal reported.
He had in fact decided to fire her earlier in the week, but waited to do it in the back of the Beast, turning what is seen as an honor given to a chosen few—a one-on-one in his limousine—into a humiliation ritual.
That’s our boy – goes out of his way to pinch people harder. I have zero sympathy for Bondi but I do marvel at Trump’s passion for torture.
Trump, it has been reported, was displeased with Bondi’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files and the lack of progress on prosecutions of his perceived political enemies, like former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James. Bondi, according to the report, said to others that some of Trump’s demands weren’t possible and were “outside of things she could do.”
On account of how Trump hasn’t yet managed to replace every single prosecutor with a Trump stooge, and non-stooges won’t charge people with imaginary crimes.
Bondi is out. Expect someone even worse to replace her.
Trump has fired Pam Bondi as attorney general. She will be replaced for now by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who will serve as acting attorney general, Trump said.
The president wrote on Truth Social that Bondi would be “transitioning to a much needed and important new job in the private sector,” praising her for her work in his administration and offering no specific reason for why she would be leaving.
I bet I know what the reason is. I bet it’s because he likes firing people. It’s fun!
Trump had been frustrated with Bondi on multiple fronts, sources said, including her handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files and that she had not investigated or prosecuted enough of his political opponents. She is the second Cabinet secretary to be ousted in recent weeks; last month, Trump removed Kristi Noem as secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. One source said Trump felt that firing went smoothly, making him less wary of removing others.
Fun fun fun. One of the many perks of the job. Sadism is the best part of squatting in the Oval Office.
She tried to cling on but alas…
Bondi in recent weeks had spent more time around Trump, including by joining him at the Supreme Court for oral arguments in the birthright citizenship case on Wednesday. It’s the opposite tack taken by other top officials in the first Trump administration, who reduced their time around the president when they determined he was growing dissatisfied with their work.
Well there you go. Avoid him; yer fired. Cuddle up to him; ya fired.
Lie down with rats, get up with bubonic plague.
The Good Law Project aka Jolyon Maugham’s project is sad to have to tell you that it has failed to punish a barrister who doesn’t subscribe to The Sacred Ideology.
Bar Standards Board fails to act on barrister harassment
Barrister Sarah Phillimore repeatedly deadnamed and misgendered a trans woman online. Her regulator has rejected our complaint but we won’t be giving up
But this is the law we’re talking about. Is there a law that says people have to call men women and say “she” when they know he’s a he? Is that in fact something lawyers should be doing at all? Aren’t there very good reasons for the law to stick to reality, the facts, the truth?
In August 2025, we complained to the Bar Standards Board (BSB) after Sarah Phillimore shared more than 50 posts across multiple social media platforms that referred to Kate*, frequently in derogatory terms. In those posts, Phillimore misgendered, deadnamed and shared photos of Kate, and used graphic language about her genitals. Following that campaign Kate made an attempt on her own life – as is evident from her GP records.
Kate who? Why just Kate? Why a first name only?
Anyway, Kate is Euan Weddell, who calls himself Sophie Molly, and shouts disgusting insults at women through a megaphone. He is not a nice guy.
As a barrister, Phillimore is meant to be held to high standards by the Bar Standards Board. The board’s handbook makes clear that barristers must not “behave in a way which is likely to diminish the trust and confidence which the public places in you or in the profession”.
I think a barrister who insists that a man is a woman is behaving in a way likely to diminish trust and confidence. I certainly wouldn’t trust that barrister.
In its decision, the BSB said that “The context of [Kate’s] social media and public comments has brought her own trans status into the debate” and “We do not consider that [Phillimore] singles [Kate] out for cruel treatment, such that her behaviour victimises [Kate]”. You can read its decision, redacted of private information, here.
But of course it’s true that Weddell’s social media and public comments have brought his trans status into the debate. They have also brought his venomous hatred of noncompliant women into the debate. The clip where he calls JK Rowling “you heinous old bitch” at a public demonstration is still there for all to see.
*Kate’s name has been changed because of concerns about her safety. We have also redacted the BSB’s letter only to remove information which might identify Kate.
No concerns about Sarah Phillimore’s safety though. Why’s that?