A trans woman is suing The Times for…you’ll never guess.

A former editor at the Times is suing the newspaper for anti-trans discrimination, harassment, victimisation, and unfair dismissal on the grounds of gender reassignment — in a landmark case that, if she wins, could transform the UK media’s coverage of transgender rights.

Katherine O’Donnell was the night editor of the Scottish edition of the Times until January 2018, when she was made redundant after 14 years at the title, during which she transitioned.

Her allegations, which encompass bullying and blocking of promotions and pay rises before she unfairly lost her job, involve multiple senior figures at the Times, including the current editor, John Witherow.

O’Donnell transitioned on the job, which must mean that colleagues had to make the transition along with O’Donnell. Other things being equal it would seem the humane and decent thing to do to go ahead and make that transition…but how confident can we be that other things were equal? I ask that because the more we see of trans activism the more clear it seems that the movement attracts narcissistic bullies. Was O’Donnell reasonable and collegial about it? Or did O’Donnell take pleasure in making angry demands? If it’s the latter, could it be that O’Donnell’s deteriorating personality contributed to the redundancy, rather than the transition itself? To put it more crisply, is the issue with trans people often not that they’re trans but that they’re assholes?

The Times of course says it’s all bullshit.

The hearing at the Edinburgh Employment Tribunal, which began on Wednesday, could have far-reaching implications for UK’s news outlets. In addition to the standard employment law charges such as discrimination and victimisation, the case also rests on an argument that has never before been tested.

O’Donnell and her lawyer — Robin White of Old Square Chambers — allege that it wasn’t just what happened in the newsroom but also what those inside it published in the newspaper about trans people that constituted a hostile, anti-transgender place to work.

Sly. Very very sly. Bring one case and (if you win) make it so that the news media can no longer write or broadcast anything critical of trans activism or trans ideology. Wouldn’t that be awesome.

Should O’Donnell be successful, therefore, it would mean that a newsroom’s output could be deemed an internal, employment issue, too. News outlets may in the future have to consider how their coverage of trans people and other minority groups could be in breach of employment laws that protect members of these communities on their own staff from discrimination and bullying.

She claims that there was an atmosphere at the Times hostile to trans people in general and therefore also to her.

I wonder though. I wonder if the atmosphere was really hostile to trans people, or rather to the claims of trans ideology. It could have been both, of course.

O’Donnell alleges that she was excluded from consideration for acting editor in Scotland and believes this was because of her gender identity.

She told the tribunal that in the summer of 2014, the then–Scotland editor of the Times, Angus MacLeod, informed her about a discussion between him and two senior executives in London about who should be put in place while he undertook chemotherapy. When the subject of putting O’Donnell in that position arose, one of the executives replied, “Under no circumstances”.

But could that be because O’Donnell is a narcissistic asshole rather than because O’Donnell is trans? Given that being / becoming trans is currently functioning as a portal to being a completely selfish self-obsessed petulant bullying shit, the odds seem high.

The Times’ counsel responded by pointing to the email MacLeod had sent recommending someone else for the job and saying that “there was a better candidate” in the view of management, who were also concerned about the “difficult” working relationships O’Donnell had with staff in the London office. Callan also said that members of the staff found O’Donnell “aggressive”.

In her witness statement, O’Donnell wrote that “the framing of his argument — that I was ‘difficult’ to deal with was fundamentally sexist. Difficult and abrasive are terms frequently used to describe women in the workplace who stand their ground.”

But O’Donnell is not a woman. O’Donnell started out in life as a male, and thus received the training and the unconscious cues that male people are expected to stand their ground and be aggressive, and almost certainly brought it with him when he transitioned. Men as a group tend to be aggressive anyway, and trans activism gives them license to be even more so on the spurious grounds that trans women are doubly triply quadrupally oppressed because they are BOTH women AND trans. This does in fact produce people who are difficult to deal with.

It’s tricky. O’Donnell is of course not wrong that people who get unequal treatment are routinely labeled “difficult” and aggressive and all the rest of it. It could be true that The Times treated O’Donnell unfairly. It will go on being true that I don’t like seeing men help themselves to women’s status and then announce that they’re far more oppressed than women have ever been.

By popular(ish) demand.

They aren’t though. They aren’t equivalent at all.

Stop with the transphobic nonsense. Signs and protests like these are equivalent to having signs that say "women don't have sex with women". There are women who have sex with women and it is equally true that some lesbians have penises. #YorkPride2019 #YorkPride #acceptance pic.twitter.com/CMGnyl8Xuu

— Daniel Holt (@holtdan) June 8, 2019

Same-sex attraction is not the same kind of thing as claiming to be the sex opposite to your body. It’s a different kind of thing. Same-sex attraction is not the same kind of thing as gender dysphoria. Same-sex attraction is not the same kind of thing as thinking you were “born in the wrong body.” Same-sex attraction is not the same kind of thing as thinking you have a “woman’s soul” in a man’s body.

And why do lesbians feel the need to make this point? To carry signs saying lesbians don’t have penises? Because many trans activists bully lesbians for not wanting to have sex with male-bodied people. If trans activism hadn’t moved in a direction so hostile to women they wouldn’t have to. If trans activism hadn’t moved in a direction so hostile to lesbians they wouldn’t have to. They’re not doing it to be mean, they’re doing it to say they have a right to say no and a right to have boundaries. It’s not for a Daniel Holt to tell them otherwise.

Trump and his gang continue to think they can deal with climate change by lying about it.

The White House blocked a State Department intelligence staffer this week from issuing testimony to the House warning that human-caused climate change could be “possibly catastrophic,” according to The Washington Post.

The Post, citing several senior administration officials, reported that officials from several different White House offices took issue with written testimony Rod Schoonover of the State Department planned to deliver to the House Intelligence Committee on Wednesday.

Because the problem isn’t that climate change will be catastrophic, it’s that warning us about it will interfere with somebody’s profits.

Officials told the Post that the White House Office of Legislative Affairs ultimately decided Schoonover could go before the committee but would not let him submit prepared written testimony to the panel.

That way climate change will just pack its bags and go away.

The written testimony, as published by the Post, offered major warnings “on the national security implications of climate change.” It stood in marked contrast to the generally dismissive tone Trump has taken towards climate change and to recent remarks from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

“Climate change will have wide-ranging implications for US national security over the next 20 years through global perturbations, increased risk of political instability, heightened tensions between countries for resources, a growing number of climate-linked humanitarian crises, emergent geostrategic competitive domains and adverse effects on militaries,” the blocked testimony stated.

It concluded: “Absent extensive mitigating factors or events, we see few plausible future scenarios where significant — possibly catastrophic — harm does not arise from the compounded effects of climate change.”

So, better to keep the whole thing a secret and just proceed as we’ve been doing.

Pink News still saying Be Inclusive, Exclude the Feminist Women.

We stand for an inclusive community. Say no to TERFs. #Pride pic.twitter.com/zC8MdHUJYl

— PinkNews (@PinkNews) June 8, 2019

He actually said that.

AG Barr: "As we've been watching the coverage of June 6, 1944 D-Day, I had the thought that my arrival this time felt a little bit, I think, like jumping into Sainte-Mère-Église on the morning of June 5, trying to figure out where you could land without getting shot." pic.twitter.com/D36xU0uYSj

— The Hill (@thehill) June 8, 2019

The Guardian solemnly parses Trump’s Fractured Astronomy:

Trump’s declaration shocked many space enthusiasts, because the moon has not traditionally been regarded as part of Mars.

The leading theory is that a collision between Earth and a planet-sized entity, many years ago, resulted in debris that eventually became the moon. On average Mars is 140m miles from the moon. Nasa did not immediately respond to a question from the Guardian asking if the moon is part of Mars.

Well it’s Friday afternoon. I’m sure they’ll get to it on Monday.

Irrespective of whether the moon is part of Mars (it isn’t), Trump’s announcement was doubly surprising given his previous enthusiasm for a moon trip. His criticism of Nasa for “talking about going to the moon” came just three weeks after Trump championed the idea of a lunar visit.

Why so he did!

Under my Administration, we are restoring @NASA to greatness and we are going back to the Moon, then Mars. I am updating my budget to include an additional $1.6 billion so that we can return to Space in a BIG WAY!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 13, 2019

Maybe he meant the other Moon?

[I]t soon emerged that Trump’s moon reversal may have been provoked by the Fox Business tv channel.​ One hour before the president offered his take on the moon’s origin and his criticism of Nasa, Fox guest Neil Cavuto had expressed scepticism over a moon trip.

Cavuto reportedly told the TV cable network that Nasa is “refocusing on the moon, the next sort of quest, if you will, but didn’t we do this moon thing quite a few decades ago?”

Well that’s the thing, though: if it’s on tv, it’s true. You can’t be sure it’s true if it’s just NASA telling you, or people like astronomers and engineers and Rocket Scientists. But if it’s Mister TV? Then you know.

Well ok then. I did not know that.

For all of the money we are spending, NASA should NOT be talking about going to the Moon – We did that 50 years ago. They should be focused on the much bigger things we are doing, including Mars (of which the Moon is a part), Defense and Science!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 7, 2019

Please, tell us more about how terrified men are of women:

Two women say they were subjected to a homophobic attack and left covered in blood after refusing to kiss on a bus.

Melania Geymonat, 28, said the attack on her and her partner Chris happened on the top deck of a London night bus as they were travelling to Camden Town.

A group of young men began harassing them when they discovered the women were together, asking them to kiss while making sexual gestures.

Four male teenagers aged between 15 and 18 have been arrested.

They are being questioned on suspicion of robbery and aggravated grievous bodily harm.

How grievous? This grievous:

I wrote for The Telegraph about two women being violently punished for refusing to kiss for male strangers’ sexual pleasure. Includes context: @EstherMcVey1 and other MPs’ tacit endorsement of homophobia and Ann Widdecombe’s outright bigotry https://t.co/cyFtGx9RV1

— Sophie WilkINson (@sophwilkinson) June 7, 2019

Ms Geymonat said: “They surrounded us and started saying really aggressive stuff, things about sexual positions, lesbians and claiming we could kiss so they could watch us.

“To ease the situation I tried to make some jokes, like Chris wasn’t understanding because she didn’t speak English.

“She even acted as if she was sick… but they started throwing coins. The next thing I know Chris is in the middle of the bus and they are punching her.

“So I immediately went there by impulse and tried to pull her out of there and they started punching me. I was really bleeding.”

Yes but cis privilege.

Guys who identify as women reeeeeeeeeeally need to stop saying this.

From the Telegraph:

Author David Thomas still lives as a man, but has begun the male-to-female gender transition that will eventually result in becoming a woman. This week he tackles the controversial issue of transwomen using female-only toilets

You know how parents tell children who are scared by spiders, ‘It’s much more frightened of you than you are of it’? Well, the same thing applies to transwomen in female-only toilets. However frightened women may be by our presence, we are way, way more petrified by having to be there.

No.

No.

Men don’t get to say that.

First of all he doesn’t and can’t even know that.

Second there really is such a thing as men assaulting women in isolated places, including such places as female-only toilets.

Third look at yourself. If you have a male body then women have more to fear from you than you do from them. You don’t get to flip that around just because you have a fashionable idea that you “identify as” a woman. Identifying as a woman doesn’t give you the skeleton and musculature and lungs and heart of a woman.

Fourth look at the analogy. Children and spiders. Children really can squash spiders with one quick smack. The same is not true of women with regard to men. The analogy is fucking ridiculous and it just betrays how maddeningly narcissistically indifferent too many men are to the real risks that women have to deal with.

See also: this astounding comment at Daily Nous:

JT ·June 6, 2019 at 3:02 pm

What’s more, in making the empirical claim the GC crowd also never seems to want to acknowledge the very well documented violence that transwomen often face when forced to use men’s bathrooms, locker rooms, etc. The fact is that it is way more dangerous to be trans than it is to be a ciswoman. Conveniently, this inconvenient fact is never really acknowledge or discussed by the trans-exclusionary crowd.

Now Pink News feels misunderstood.

Mind you, three hours ago it was still all about the “nothing happened and she asked for it.”

The other speaker with her said Julie Bindel was “not physically hurt.” https://t.co/TlEAfBp6Ka

— PinkNews (@PinkNews) June 7, 2019

But I guess the responses finally got through to them.

Today we published a story about Julie Bindel. We wanted to clear up some misconceptions:

PinkNews looked into an alleged attack on Bindel by a trans person. Bindel tweeted she was “physically attacked,” but later said she was not physically harmed.

— PinkNews (@PinkNews) June 7, 2019

Alleged, we tell you, ALLEGED. By a trans person. Not by an enraged shouting man, but by a trans person. She said she was physically attacked but not physically harmed ohmygod how can this possibly be it must be an evil terfy plot.

PinkNews wrote a factual article about the incident based on several sources. This has been misrepresented as defending the trans person involved in the incident. Needless to say, we don’t condone violence or threatening behaviour towards anyone. We merely relayed the facts.

— PinkNews (@PinkNews) June 7, 2019

It’s not needless to say at all. The emphasis, the word order, the vocabulary, all of it was shaped to convey hostile incredulity toward Julie’s account and sympathy for the angry shouting man who charged at her.

What a pack of cowardly liars.

Damn, Pink News is horrible. It should just change its name to Trans News (which would be accurate in both senses).

Julie Bindel misgendered a trans woman who she claimed “physically attacked” her. https://t.co/TlEAfBp6Ka

— PinkNews (@PinkNews) June 7, 2019

That’s right, lead with the “misgendered” part, and also pretend not to believe the attack happened.

You can see it’s being ratioed, but Pink News won’t listen.

Let’s see how Lily Wakefield reports this story:

Radical feminist Julie Bindel claimed that she was “physically attacked” by a transgender woman after speaking at an event at Edinburgh University on Wednesday (June 5).

This is Pink News, yet Wakefield forgets to say that Julie is a lesbian. Too busy monstering her, it seems.

We get Julie’s tweet about the attack, and then

The person referred to is Cathy Brennan, a trans woman misgendered as “a man” by Bindel, who claims she “lost her s[hi]t” but that she did not touch Bindel. Bindel later told The Scotsman that she was “almost” punched.

This is what Pink News focuses on – not the raging aggression by a male-bodied person against a lesbian feminist but the lesbian feminist’s “misgendering” her attacker.

Even if you think trans women should generally be called women, referred to as “she,” validated as women, I would think that occasions when trans women rely on their male bodies and voices and aggression to intimidate women would be an exception. Because that’s what was going on here. This is what makes me so furious about male displays of “losing their shit” at women – it’s their lack of inhibition in summoning their physical advantages to make the woman feel fear. I’ve known so many men who should know better but do this anyway. Joe “Cathy” Brennan wasn’t performing femininity in this incident, he was performing male rage, and he was doing that in aid of terrorizing a woman who makes him angry by…the ironies are infinite…not believing he’s literally a woman. “CALL ME A WOMAN YOU FUCKING CUNT.” Er, no.

But Lily Wakefield writes for Pink News, so none of that makes it into the story. What does make it into the story is the opposition to the panel.

The event was a panel discussion on “women’s sex-based rights.” The event page for the panel states that they planned to discuss “future ways forward for women’s rights in a world of complex sex and gender relations.”

Staff and students at Edinburgh University protested against the talk taking place, branding it “transphobic,” amassing more than 1,300 signatures on a petition against the event, holding a silent protest outside and organising a rally for later in the evening.

“Our view is that there is misinformation, misunderstanding, and fear-mongering presenting cisgender women’s rights as being opposed to trans and non-binary people’s rights,” said the school of social and political science student and staff collective who created the petition.

“We affirm that trans women’s rights are women’s rights and that cis and trans women should be standing together to combat gender oppression.”

When do trans women ever do that though? Apart from the ones who get called “truscum” for their pains. Trans women of the Joe “Cathy” Brennan type have zero interest in standing with “cis” women, they’re far too busy threatening and monstering women they call TERFs.

The Edinburgh University staff Pride network also spoke out against the event, and every member of the network’s committee has now resigned, claiming that the university censored their opposition.

Jonathan MacBride, co-chair of the network, told PinkNews: “Instead of supporting us, supporting our position, they chose to censor us, saying in future we had to ask permission before taking a stand on anything.”

He said of the silent protest: “Staff and students came together beforehand to give each other strength and to make placards and badges. The solidarity was a strong message of staff and students together, protesting an unbalanced, one-sided event.”

Subtext: Julie Bindel is on the Wrong Side and had it coming.

When asked to comment, Bindel declined to say whether she had filed a police report against Brennan but told PinkNews: “I despise your woman-hating, anti-lesbian rag, and would rather give Donald Trump a massage than speak to you.”

Bindel subsequently claimed on Twitter that PinkNews was “more-or-less calling me a liar” after reaching [we reached] out to her for the purposes of journalistic fact-checking and to offer a right of reply.

The state of that: a journalist who can’t even keep her subjects and verbs straight. She has Julie reaching out to herself.

A couple of responses to the tweet linking the article.

Good to know that pronouns matter more to you than the physical safety of a prominent lesbian campaigner. Just so we're all clear on where Pink News' values lie.

— Hadley Freeman (@HadleyFreeman) June 7, 2019

You really should be ashamed of yourself @lilylwakefield for such a disgraceful hatchet job on a real hero of the feminist and gay/lesbian movement.

You're an utter disgrace for writing something that lies so much. Shame on you.

— FireSalamander (@TallDaveSE11) June 7, 2019

Ok here’s a thing.

There are rainbow coloured signs all over the gay village in Manchester, put up by city authorities, which say ‘look fabulous, you’re on CCTV’.

This could be the title of a book on the 21st century state.

— Helen Dale (@_HelenDale) June 6, 2019

Oh the puckish sense of humor of the security state.

Yes she does have the photo.

Enjoy. pic.twitter.com/sKV81Sqm92

— Helen Dale (@_HelenDale) June 6, 2019

The Evening Standard says Julie Bindel had it coming.

CONTROVERSIAL feminist writer Julie Bindel says she was “lunged” at last night by an activist who had to be restrained by security guards. Bindel, co-founder of Justice For Women, was leaving a panel event at Edinburgh University when she was approached by activist Cathy Brennan, a trans woman whom Bindel mis-identifies as a man. “He ran right at me, was inches away from me. His fists were raised and his face was twisted with hatred and anger,” Bindel told The Londoner this morning.

Note the care to monster her with the very first word, which luckily is in all caps.

Then note that they see fit to say she “mis-identifed” as a man this large man who felt large and male and confident enough to lunge at her.

Much misidentify.

https://twitter.com/FranFaeFife/status/1136415300788903936

The Standard again:

Brennan posted on Twitter last night that she “lost my sh*t at Julie Bindel. She filmed me. I’m safe”. Brennan also claimed “the truth of the matter is that I did not raise a fist. I attempted to push past security so I could speak…with a person who has caused great harm to trans people.” The panel, entitled “Women’s Sex-Based Rights: what does (and should) the future hold?”, had already drawn anger last month after the Edinburgh University’s Students’ Association Liberation group accused the university of “stirring up transphobia” for hosting it.

The panel didn’t “draw” anger. Some students chose to get angry about it. Saying the panel “drew” anger shifts the responsibility.

H/t Josh

A further thought occurs to me, pondering this business of Justin Weinberg and his heightened (and in my view exaggerated) empathy for t philosopher (who claims to be a trans woman) along with his barely detectable empathy for women and other subordinated categories of people. Imagine being made to feel bad about yourself the way t philosopher is, he tells us. So I ponder what it is that makes t philosopher feel bad. According to tp it’s terfy women talking about sex and gender, but I was attempting to look behind that.

So I thought about the fact that academics have to stand up in front of groups of people, small groups or large or both, and lecture at them and/or discuss with them.

So, yes, I can see how that would be freighted for a trans person. (It’s freighted for others too though, of course. What is an academic supposed to look like? Oh, you know – corduroy jacket, beard, pipe, pallid skin.) One of the big hurdles for trans people is the voice, and academics have to use their voices a lot. In other words teaching is quite likely a very self-conscious activity for trans people, over and above the self-consciousness that can afflict anyone.

What would the ideal be? I guess that students and colleagues and everyone would just smoothly accept the trans teacher as her/his chosen gender, with no lapses of memory or any other kind of glitch.

But the difficulty there, it seems to me, is that people also and at the same time have to accept everyone else as her/his chosen gender, with no lapses of memory or any other kind of glitch. I’m thinking it’s not all that easy for human beings to do both of those things at once. We have to internalize a lot of cues to who is which sex starting in infancy, and we also have to learn to override all those cues in the case of a very few people.

Is that even possible? Can people internalize both sets of cues, that give opposite results, without ever getting confused or absent-minded?

If it’s not, the result is that the acceptance embrace etc of the trans person as her/his chosen gender is always a conscious overriding of lifelong cues…and the trans person knows this.

So…maybe, even if everyone agreed that trans people are the gender they say they are, end of story, trans people would still feel edgy and self-conscious about it, because they would know people were always having to override the cues.

I don’t know what to do with that thought. My ideal is a different one, in which trans people would be content to identify as her/his chosen gender and leave it at that, without any insistence on “validation” and the like from the rest of the world. I think that would go a long way to eliminate this “anguish” that Justin Weinberg talks about, because it would be so much easier on all parties. It would no longer matter all that much if students were thinking “not a man, a woman” or the reverse every minute of the class, because the trans academic would be at peace with knowing people can’t help seeing what they see and hearing what they hear.