La Leche League doing a quiet brag about how inclooosive its policies are.

Replies are closed. Quote-tweets are scathing.

Breastfeeding should be inclooosive.

Six trustees of a nationwide breastfeeding support group have been suspended for demanding that biological men be excluded from their services.

The British wing of La Leche League (LLL), which gives mother-to-mother support to those finding it hard to breastfeed, has been told by its US-based board of directors that the service cannot be single sex and they must support “male lactation”.

Also they can’t say “mother” and they can’t question gender ideology.

It’s perfectly simple, and easy if you’ll just shut up and pay attention. The baby learns to identify as getting milk out of Daddy’s nipples. Problem solved. Can we move on now?

One leader from LLLGB, the name for the charity’s British wing, said: “Many breastfeeding supporters like me feel utterly disheartened by the way our charity has become obsessed and sidetracked by sex and gender issues. In the most recent diktat, we were informed that our charity is not and ‘cannot become a single-sex’ charity.”

Indeed not! It must be a reality-denying charity instead. So much more interesting, don’t you think?

Late in 2023, a group of trustees questioned the US-led board, LLLI about its shift to gender ideology, and asked to remain single-sex.

In February 2024, LLLI told them: “We focus on providing breastfeeding support and understand the importance of making our spaces welcoming to all those who want to breastfeed or give their babies human milk. We don’t argue with parents or other leaders about how they identify; we accept them with respect, just as they say they are, and do not refer to them with words that conflict with their identity.”

“We are proudly, systematically stupid and credulous, and we bully any women who refuse to be stupid and credulous about men who want to ‘breastfeed’ infants.”

They suspended the six trustees, saying; “The continued promotion of LLL as an organisation that excludes people is damaging LLL’s credibility.” However, LLLI does allow groups in countries which do not accept trans rights, including many Muslim ones, to exclude biological men.

Oh does it. “Lesser breeds without the law” is it? How very colonialist of them.

Oh how about that, the BBC does know who is a woman when it comes time to pay the salaries.

Four senior female news presenters have accused the BBC of “grinding down” women on pay and failing to tackle persistent pay discrimination at a tribunal court hearing in London.

The presenter Martine Croxall – alongside Karin Giannone, Kasia Madera and Annita McVeigh – accused the broadcaster of conducting a “sham recruitment exercise” after they lost their jobs when the BBC merged its domestic and global news channels last year.

In witness statements the women, aged between 48 and 54, said they had been discriminated against because of their sex, age and union membership.

Plus their failure to identify as trans. Maybe it’s not too late?

In documents the women said that Jess Brammar, the BBC’s then editor of news channels, “privately assured four other chief presenters – two men and two younger women – their jobs were safe, but admitted she couldn’t say much ‘for legal reasons’”.

In witness statements the women said that while some of them were demoted, others faced a pay cut. They added: “No men and no women younger than us suffered these detriments.”

Well it’s only fair. If you’ve got the bad taste to be female the least you can do is be young.

Whoops.

The Guardian attempts to report on a massive attack on women’s rights without ever mentioning women. Look, look, women treated as not deserving of rights over their own bodies, except we take it back about the “women” part, we don’t know what that word means, we never heard of any people called that, we don’t know whose rights these are that we’re writing this piece about.

These fucking idiots.

How can you report on a massive war on women’s autonomy while adamantly refusing to mention women?

You can’t. You fucking can’t. By erasing women from this news article you join Team Delete Women’s Rights.

The Guardian, or reporter Carter Sherman, or both, literally don’t use the word once. It appears once, but that’s in the name of a clinic the story cites. They don’t voluntarily use it to specify the people whose rights are being destroyed one single time.

Euphemisms for “women” bolded:

A six-week abortion ban went into effect on Wednesday in Florida, cutting off access to the procedure before many people know they are pregnant and leveling the south-eastern United States’ last stronghold for abortion rights.

The ban went into force weeks after Florida’s state supreme court issued a decision clearing the way for it to take effect. Strict bans now blanket all of the American deep south, increasing the strain on the country’s remaining clinics. The closest clinic for most Floridians past six weeks of pregnancy is now several states away in North Carolina, which outlaws abortion after 12 weeks of pregnancy.

Last year, Florida abortion providers performed more than 84,000 abortions, state data found – including more than 9,000 for out-of-state patients…

On Tuesday, the last day before the ban took effect, an abortion clinic in Gainesville, Florida, was trying to squeeze in as many patients as possible. The clinic had added hours throughout April, but the rush was compounded by the fact that, in addition to the impending ban, Florida requires people to have an in-person consultation at an abortion clinic at least 24 hours before they get the procedure or take abortion pills. A patient could have arrived on Tuesday exactly six weeks into her pregnancy, but have been too late to get an abortion given that the ban came into effect on Wednesday.

Oops how did that “her” get in there? You wanna watch that, boys.

On Tuesday, the female team of staffers at the clinic, Bread and Roses Women’s Health Center, had to explain these complex regulations to bewildered callers and patients over and over again, as the phones rang off the hook for hours.

I wonder why the team of staffers at the clinic is female. I wonder if they all avoid the word “women” as carefully as the Guardian does.

Before the six-week ban, Kristin, director of Bread and Roses, said that the clinic rarely saw people before they hit six weeks of pregnancy.

“Most people don’t know they’re pregnant until at least six weeks,” Kristin said in an interview the week before the ban took effect.

I wonder if she really did say “Most people.”

“We try to get people in as quickly as possible, but sometimes we’re one or three weeks booked out, so it’s rare that someone is in before they’re six weeks.”

Mustn’t say “before she’s six weeks.” That would be injurious to the men who want to shove women aside.

Compared with 2020, there were nearly 9,000 more abortions in Florida in 2023. Out-of-state abortion patients accounted for almost 60% of that increase, according to the Guttmacher Institute.

Bread and Roses used to see 20 to 30 patients daily, but in April, the clinic started to see closer to 40 patients a day, Kristin said. The clinic tends to see somewhere between three to 10 out-of-state patients every day, she said.

…

“This is going to be awful, and it’s going to impact the whole south-east,” said Dr K, a family medicine doctor who performs abortions at Bread and Roses. “I just have no idea what these patients are going to do and where they’re gonna go.”

Well at least they’ll have the comfort of knowing that the Guardian refuses to call them women.

But it’s such a tiny tiny minority of people, do we really need to spend so much time on a tiny tiny tiny minority of people?

Oh dear god the stupid.

Well, first, “trans women” isn’t a name. It may be a label, but at bottom what it is is a noun accompanied by an adjective. That’s all. You can attach any adjective to any noun; doing so doesn’t automatically create a truth. I could label Thomas Willett here “stupid boy” but that by itself wouldn’t make it true that Willett is a stupid boy.

Second…seriously?

Pretend women are women, it’s in the name.

Fake women are women, it’s in the name.

Bogus women are women, it’s in the name.

Counterfeit women are women, it’s in the name.

Imaginary women are women, it’s in the name.

Do we see the problem yet?

Revolutionaries today! They ain’t what they useta be! Why in my day we would go whole hours without chocolate in order to bring down The Man.

Originally a comment by maddog1129 on Spike.

This isn’t civil contempt, this is criminal contempt. Being adjudged in criminal contempt of court is a violation of DJT’s bond conditions. He is out on pretrial release because he posted a bond in each of his four criminal cases. A condition of bond in every one of those cases is not to commit a criminal offense against any state law or federal law. “Violate no law,” is a standard bond condition in every criminal case. DJT is now subject to having his bond revoked in those cases, and being held in pretrial detention.

With regard to contempt sanctions, judges generally use a progressive approach. Fine first is typical. Remains to be seen what comes second. The judge would be perfectly within his rights to order such a contemptuous defendant jailed for any subsequent violations of court orders. I heard one commentator suggest that the judge might hold any further punishment for contempt in abeyance until the end of trial. IOW, the judge could say, I will sentence you on these 4 new (another hearing is set for Thursday on 4 new counts of contempt), and any additional instances of contempt, at the end of trial. I will also take your contempt violations into account at sentencing in this case, if you are convicted. Thus, additional instances of contempt will not only result in sentences in their own right — limited as they are by New York last to a maximum of $1,000 and/or 30 days jail per violation — but also affect the ultimate sentence for any crimes of which the jury finds you guilty.

If it were up to me, I’d revoke his bond and order him into pretrial detention. Then I’d sentence him to 30 days per new contempt violation, to run consecutively.

Darn it it’s so hard to convince everyone that you’re not the baddy when your target will insist on talking herself. Joan Smith deeply sympathizes.

If you want to see a human being squirm, just say the words “Rosie Duffield” to Sir Keir Starmer. He immediately looks like a man who wishes he was somewhere else — at the dentist, maybe, or having an intimate medical procedure. It happened again this morning, when he was asked by Susanna Reid on Good Morning Britain whether he was going to apologise to the Canterbury MP after finally admitting she was correct to say in 2021 that only women have a cervix.

Instead of answering he burbled about how well he and Rosie get along and how they “discuss a number of issues.”

This is not how Duffield sees it. She says Starmer hasn’t spoken to her for two-and-a-half years, and it’s not for want of trying on her part. Her efforts to talk to him about the bullying she’s endured from party members (and indeed anything else) have come to nothing, as she revealed in an article earlier this month.

Welp if Starmer hasn’t spoken to her in 2.5 years then it looks as if he’s telling a whopper when he says they chat about them there issues.

“Have I heard a word from [Starmer]? Or from senior colleagues?” she wrote. “No!” She added that the party leader has “almost no personal contact with his backbenchers. The last message I sent to Keir, practically begging for support, was ignored.”

Brave Sir Robin ran away.

A decent man would throw up his hands and admit he was wrong. Instead, Starmer takes refuge in platitudes — but they’re dangerous platitudes. He says he talks to Duffield. She says he doesn’t. He says he wants to have a discussion with her and “anybody else” about sex and gender. So why have I been waiting more than three years for a response to my letter on this very issue, which described attacks on women members of the Labour Party by trans activists? He still hasn’t replied after I spoke to him in person at a dinner in May 2022.

So I guess maybe he’s not a decent man?

Annnnnnnnd when the judge does fine Trump Trump wins because he just sends out another “send me money” to his credulous fools.

Donald Trump’s campaign immediately sought to capitalize after the judge in his New York criminal trial ruled him in contempt of court — the latest example of how the former president’s campaign has flipped negative legal developments into a financial boost for his reelection bid.

“A Democrat judge JUST HELD ME IN CONTEMPT OF COURT!” read a Tuesday morning email soliciting donations for Trump National Committee, a joint fundraising committee that includes Trump’s campaign and the Republican National Committee.

Of course the judge HELD HIM IN CONTEMPT OF COURT because HE WAS IN CONTEMPT OF COURT but never mind that, just send him $$$.

Trump is already a fairly prolific fundraiser, but moments of legal jeopardy have driven some of his best fundraising in the past.

In March, his campaign got a big spike in donations after New York Attorney General Tish James took a step toward seizing the former president’s assets if he couldn’t make bail in a civil case. Last fall, the campaign raked in more than $4 million in a day after Trump got his mug shot taken in Georgia, where he faces charges related to attempts to overturn the 2020 election.

Words fail me.

Same thing, Willoughby says. A gay man on a men’s hospital ward is the same thing as a man on a women’s hospital ward. The same thing.

I pointed out yesterday that calling a man who threatened to kill Rosie Duffield and JK Rowling a “troll” is offensively trivializing. I see I’m not the only one who thinks so.

You’re god damn right it does.

A tap on the knuckles for Trump:

Donald Trump has made his contempt for the court clear throughout his criminal trial in Manhattan, and now a judge has made it official. Juan Merchan ruled today that the former president had violated a gag order designed to protect the integrity of the trial and fined him $9,000.

Might as well fine him 25 cents. 9k is lunch money to him.

Merchan found that nine violations alleged by prosecutors were clear violations, but deemed a tenth too ambiguous to warrant punishment. He declined to levy the most serious punishment available to him—namely, tossing Trump in jail—but also had scathing words for Trump’s excuses for violating the order.

Would a less notorious defendant be tossed in jail? If so, is there any non-shameful reason not to toss Trump there?

Some mysterious force is preventing me from posting this directly via Nina’s tweet but haha I can do it via this one so nyah, Mysterious Force.

It’s brilliant indeed.

The CBC frowns on all this medical questioning of puberty blockers and the like.

Last month, the Cass Review findings led to a ban on the prescription of puberty-suppressing hormones except for youth enrolled in clinical research.

That’s a move away from the standard of care supported by many international medical bodies, including the Canadian Pediatric Society (CPS), the American Academy of Pediatrics and World Professional Association for Transgender Health. Though several European countries including Sweden have also restricted access to puberty blockers and other medical treatments for youth.

Could that be because “many international medical bodies” lost their goddam minds?

The report cites a systematic review of evidence, commissioned as part of the Cass Review, which found “a lack of high-quality research” that puberty blockers can help young people with gender dysphoria.

While experts in the field say more studies should be done, Canadian doctors who spoke to CBC News disagree with the finding that there isn’t enough evidence puberty blockers can help.

How about the evidence that puberty blockers can harm?

It’s so interesting that so many medical professionals seem determined to err on the side of action, when action is interfering with children’s puberties. You’d think more would want to err on the side of caution.

“There actually is a lot of evidence, just not in the form of randomized clinical trials,” said Dr. Jake Donaldson, a family physician in Calgary who treats transgender patients, including prescribing puberty blockers and hormone therapy in some cases.

“That would be kind of like saying for a pregnant woman, since we lacked randomized clinical trials for the care of people in pregnancy, we’re not going to provide care for you.… It’s completely unethical.”

Except it’s not kind of like that. Not even slightly. Pregnancy is not comparable to wanting to change sex. Pregnancy is not comparable to thinking one is the opposite sex. Pregnancy is a very real, very researched, very well understood physical state. Gender dysphoria is a very contested, barely researched, very confused and confusing mental or psychological state. The two are not comparable at all. The idiocy of saying they are hints at how we got here.

The CBC then goes on and on and on in its defense of transing teenagers. It’s shockingly reckless or worse.

So you’re not allowed to threaten to kill people?

A troll who threatened to kill JK Rowling “with a big hammer” has been warned he faces jail.

Glenn Mullen, 31, sent audio messages in Scottish Gaelic to the Harry Potter author on X/Twitter in January 2023. He said: “I’m going to kill JK Rowling with a big hammer. JK Rowling is very horrible and I hate her so much.”

In a message to Labour MP Rosie Duffield, also opposed to trans reforms, he said: “I’m going to kill Rosie Duffield with a big gun. I hate her so much.”

Mullen, of Manchester, admitted two charges of sending a communication conveying a threatening message.

But the Sun calls him “a troll” so surely that means it was just a joke.

Humza Yousaf has resigned.

In an emotional speech on Monday, Yousaf said it had been an “honor” to lead the SNP in government. But his time in power was rocky and his short tenure has harmed his party’s standing even further after a brutal year for the group.

…

[H]e never enjoyed the levels of popularity with voters that Sturgeon once did, and frequently found himself caught between the liberal tendencies of his Green allies and parts of his party on one side, and the more socially conservative members of the SNP on the other.

An especially controversial expansion of Scotland’s hate crime legislation, which expanded protections for transgender people, was hailed by LGBTQ+ groups but attacked by critics as a move that would stifle free speech.

Because hate crime is one thing and knowing that men are not women is another. Quite quite quite another. For that reason I’m happy to see him go.

Good to know.

This is a huge deal. Exemplary damages are very rare in the employment tribunal. Theyre used to signal extreme disapproval of egregious behaviour, in this case by Social Work England, the regulator. Whoever gave SWE legal advice that didn’t consist of “you’ve massively screwed up, apologise immediately, offer a decent settlement and undertake to get proper training in belief discrimination” really doesn’t deserve to get further work. They’re a very costly liability to clients.

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Different complex views.

“But it didn’t take me long to realise that it was a common cause – that the fascists are after anyone who is different, any minority. But you need those experiences to discover that solidarity.”

But Billy, you don’t find solidarity with absolutely every “different” minority, do you? You don’t accept them all. Murders, arsonists, and rapists are all “different,” and all (thankfully) minorities. So are fascists themselves. I daresay that some of them would claim to be unjustly persecuted. Do you find common cause with them? How is it that you choose the “worthy” minorities whose struggles you support?

…Bragg suggested he was embarrassed to have come to the issue fairly late. His instincts went back to old ties of solidarity against discrimination.

Couldn’t stand the thought of being outdone by a “luxury communist,” could you?

Well, your instincts led you astray. You cashed in your solidarity chips before doing your research and due diligence. You just gauged the way the wind was blowing at that moment and went with it, as powerless to resist as a dandelion fluff, going willy nilly, wherever it took you. And here you are, a full blown misogynyist, attempting to cloak your contempt for women with a threadbare, self righteous “solidarity” with abusive autogynophiles and their allies. Congratulations Billy, you found your people! Not only that, you’re spokesman too! Nice gig, eh?

I haven’t seen evidence for Bragg’s assertion that his most prominent opponents are “saying that trans people don’t exist”.

Trans people don’t exist in exactly the same way that invisible people, astrologers, and psychics don’t exist. The people certainly exist, but they are mistaken in the claims they make about themselves. At this point, I would say that like invisibility, astrology, and pychic powers, “transness” itself does not exist. Humans can’t change sex. Nobody is born in the “wrong” body. Certainly many people have serious psychological discomfort with the nature of their bodies and their sexual orientation, but none of this has anything to do with any sort of structure or entity like a “gender identity.” Replace the phrase “gender identity” with terms like “unclean spirit” or “demon” and you’ve lost nothing of value; they are all equally meaningless.

“My problem with people like Rowling, like Julie Bindel, is really who they are lined up with,”

What about you, Billy? There’s a nearly infinite list of things that you know or believe that “line up” exactly with the knowledge and beliefs of “fascists.” What colour is the sky? How much is two plus two? What’s the name of the tall, splotchy, spindly-legged, long-necked animal that lives on the savannahs of Africa? Does agreeing with “fascists” on the answers to any of these questions make you a fascist? Then why should Rowling’s and Bindel’s belief in the reality of sex make them fascists?

“[Rowling and Bindel] are people who I agree with about women’s rights.”

No, Billy, you really, really don’t.