Well great: they’re just going to go on enforcing trans dogma anyway.

Women’s rights campaigners have been warning ministers that [a Government bill days away from becoming law], which is intended to introduce a new digital ID system, will play havoc with the ability of companies such as gym chains and public bodies like the NHS and police to ascertain someone’s sex – just after the Supreme Court ruling intended to bring much-needed clarity.

The bill will allow people to prove their identity and facts about themselves by using a new voluntary Government app that is linked to what the bill calls “digital verification services” (DVS), backed by a government “trustmark”. It will draw data from a number of sources but the bodies being presented with the app won’t be able to tell which documents it is relying on.

That means that if the app states that the user is “female”, that information could, in theory, either be based on the sex stated on their passport or driving licence – which can be changed relatively easily from someone’s biological sex – or a birth certificate, which can be changed but only if the individual first obtains a formal gender recognition certificate (which has to be approved by a panel made up of lawyers or medics.) 

To worsen matters, says Helen Joyce, of the women’s rights charity Sex Matters, under the new system the app will have to be “treated as more authoritative than any pre-existing record – or the evidence of your own eyes.”

Sigh. It just never ends. The most important cause in the world is making sure men can pretend to be women and force everyone else to agree and act accordingly, no matter what. The dangers and injustices this cause imposes on women just don’t matter. All that matters is the bliss of the man who gets to play Let’s Pretend all day every day.

On Wednesday, the Conservatives attempted to amend the bill so that sex data would be taken solely from birth certificates. The amendment was defeated by 363 votes to 97, meaning the bill will now move onto its final stage – the third reading – before becoming law.

Tory MPs had previously warned that “inaccurate data entrenched by the Bill” could “pose a risk” to vulnerable people, but the MP for Walthamstow, Stella Creasy, was among many Labour MPs who criticised the Opposition amendment, calling it “a targeting of the trans community which is deeply regressive.”

Oh hell. The twanz communniny is more important than anyone else on the planet, the end, shut up, we can’t hear you.

Trump and his toads continue their push to grab Greenland.

The U.S. is stepping up its intelligence-gathering efforts regarding Greenland, drawing America’s spying apparatus into President Trump’s campaign to take over the island, according to two people familiar with the effort.

Several high-ranking officials under Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard issued a “collection emphasis message” to intelligence-agency heads last week. They were directed to learn more about Greenland’s independence movement and attitudes on American resource extraction on the island. 

As one does before an invasion.

 The Greenland order, which went to agencies including the Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency, underscores the administration’s apparent commitment to seek control of the self-governing island. It forms part of the Kingdom of Denmark, a North Atlantic Treaty Organization member and a decadeslong ally.

Yeah the same way Hitler “sought control” of the Sudetenland.

Asked by NBC News in an interview that aired Sunday whether he would rule out seizing Greenland by force, Trump demurred. 

“I don’t rule it out,” he said. “I don’t say I’m going to do it, but I don’t rule out anything. No, not there. We need Greenland very badly. Greenland is a very small amount of people, which we’ll take care of, and we’ll cherish them, and all of that. But we need that for international security.”

And if we say we need it very badly, that means we get to grab it.

Denmark is asking questions.

Denmark’s foreign minister says he will summon the US ambassador to address a report that Washington’s spy agencies have been told to focus on Greenland amid Donald Trump’s threats to take over the island.

“It worries me greatly because we do not spy on friends,” Lars Løkke Rasmussen said, responding to the report in The Wall Street Journal.

(Don’t we? I bet we do.)

Rasmussen, who was attending an EU ministers meeting in Warsaw, said the report was “somewhat disturbing”.

“We are going to call in the US acting ambassador for a discussion at the foreign ministry to see if we can confirm this information,” Rasmussen said. “It doesn’t seem to be strongly rejected by those who speak out. That worries me.”

You and us both.

The Women’s Institute waves the incloosivvitee flag.

The WI (National Federation of Women’s Institutes)

NFWI Statement on Supreme Court ruling:

The WI works to connect, empower and support women, and we are committed to treating all our members with respect, dignity and understanding. In light of the Supreme Court ruling and interim update from the EHRC, we are taking time to consider carefully the implications for our organisation. While we consider and understand the impact of the judgement, our existing inclusion policies continue to apply. We encourage all members to continue supporting each other with respect and care at this time, as we have done throughout our 110 year history.

In other words we’re continuing to incloood men whether you bitches like it or not so ha.

The WI (National Federation of Women’s Institutes) limited who can comment on this post.

Of course it did.

From the Department of Random Sadism:

Lawyers representing a number of immigrants asked a federal judge on Wednesday to “urgently” block the Trump administration from deporting a group of people to Libya, Saudi Arabia or any other country where they are not citizens until the U.S. government gives them a chance to contest the removals.

The lawyers asked Judge Brian E. Murphy in Boston to rule quickly after reports that federal immigration officers were preparing to expel people from Vietnam, Laos and the Philippines to Libya, a troubled North African nation “notorious for its human rights violations, especially with respect to migrant residents,” their emergency motions says.

Libya??? Why Libya? Why not Vietnam, Laos and the Philippines? Just what it says on the tin, apparently: random sadism.

In their filing, the lawyers said they feared the removals were “imminent” and argued that such a move would violate the judge’s prior orders barring the Trump administration from sending anyone with a final deportation order to a country where they are not a citizen without first giving them a “meaningful opportunity” to seek protection in the United States.

Ok but judges and orders and barring and meaningful opportunity are all tedious and boring, while sending them to one of the shittiest places on the planet is almost as entertaining as The Apprentice.

Asked Wednesday about the reports of a deportation flight to Libya, President Donald Trump said he did not know about it and referred the reporter who asked the question to the Department of Homeland Security.

He says that a lot. He does horrifying things and then says he doesn’t know about it.

Oh good, it seems we’re spying on Denmark, and by spying of course I mean casing the joint.

Denmark has said that it will summon the US ambassador to Copenhagen to respond to reports that US intelligence agencies have been ordered to increase espionage in Greenland.

The Danish foreign minister, Lars Løkke Rasmussen, said on Wednesday that he was concerned about the report in the Wall Street Journal, telling the Ritzau news agency: “It worries me a lot, because we don’t spy between friends.”

Speaking on his way to a meeting in Warsaw, he added: “I can’t know if it’s true because it’s in a newspaper. But it doesn’t seem to be strongly rejected by those who speak out. That worries me.”

These are worrying people. It’s always safest to worry, with them in power.

The Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency were all included in the message. It told chiefs to study Greenland’s independence movement and attitudes to American efforts to extract resources on the island, according to the Journal, citing two unnamed officials familiar with the matter.

Seasoned intelligence operatives say the Arctic island of about 56,000 inhabitants has not historically been a target of US espionage activity.

Well that was then, before they wanted to steal the Arctic island.

Trump, who has mused since his first presidency about the possibility of possessing Greenland, refused to rule out seizing the 836,000 sq mile territory by force in an interview with NBC that was broadcast last weekend.

“I don’t say I’m going to do it, but I don’t rule out anything,” he said. “We need Greenland very badly. Greenland is a very small amount of people, which we’ll take care of, and we’ll cherish them, and all of that. But we need that for international security.”

Ok. I very badly need all of Trump’s money, so he has to give it to me. That’s how needing something works.

It’s like inviting people over for dinner and then insisting you want to buy their children.

Here was newly elected Prime Minister Mark Carney making his first visit to the Oval Office to see President Donald Trump, who has spent months musing about turning America’s northern neighbor into the 51st state.

It didn’t take long for a reporter to ask about what was on everyone’s mind. Trump said he was still interested in annexing Canada, describing the border between the two countries as nothing more than an arbitrary line.

Well that’s true of a lot of borders. The exact spot where they’re drawn is sometimes “an arbitrary line” as opposed to a river or a canyon or an ocean. It doesn’t follow that they can be thrown out by a brainless egomaniac who likes to grab everybody’s stuff.

Carney’s campaign was fueled by a wave of anger at Trump’s aggressive rhetoric, and now was his chance to defend his country to the president’s face. He was polite and firm.

“Some places are never for sale,” Carney said. Canada is one of them, he added, and “it won’t be for sale, ever.”

Trump gave a little shrug and raised his eyebrows. “Never say never,” he responded.

Of course he did, because he’s a rude brainless crass bully.

We apologize, Canada. He’s not house-trained.

Well, that’s clear enough. Message received.

Is it the end of the road for stupid language games?

The NHS must use “plain English” in guidance for women and transgender people, Wes Streeting has said.

The Health Secretary stressed that women should not be “excluded or erased” in an effort for the NHS to be “trans inclusive”, such as by referring to “people with cervixes”.

He criticised the “totally misguided attempts” of NHS managers to be inclusive by removing the word women, which has included phrases such as “birthing people” and “chestfeeding”.

Misguided, idiotic, and profoundly contemptuous of women. You don’t be “inclusive” by erasing the female half of humanity.

Asked about NHS language on cervical screening, Mr Streeting said it had “annoyed lots of us”.

“Well, the thing that I’ve railed against is the erasure of women,” he told Times Radio. “So, when you’ve got well-meaning but totally misguided attempts to be inclusive of trans people by erasing women that, I think, has quite rightly and understandably, got a lot of women’s backs up.

“And not just women, I think it’s annoyed lots of us, because you don’t need to exclude or erase women in order to be trans inclusive.”

And if you did, you still shouldn’t, because 1. trans isn’t even a thing and 2. women are half of all humanity and people who claim to be trans are a much much much smaller fraction than that. You don’t get to erase half of all people in order to give a little thrill to a few thousand people. Those few thousand people will just have to get on with their lives without the treat of insulting women.

Following the Supreme Court’s ruling that the words “woman” and “sex” in the Equality Act refer to a biological woman and biological sex, Mr Streeting said updated guidance from NHS England would be “issued before the summer”.

A series of investigations by The Telegraph has revealed the widespread failure of NHS trusts across the UK to provide single-sex spaces to both patients and staff following high profile disputes, such as the case of the Dr Beth Upton, in which transgender NHS staff have used women’s changing rooms or lavatories.

In which male transgender NHS staff have used women’s changing rooms or lavatories. Even the Telegraph refuses to get it right.

The very best most compassionate people support trans ideology.

Don’t worry, they also call her a cunt – no misogynist insult is neglected.

People are celebrating Magdalen Berns’s birthday today.

Here is a guest post of hers from January 2016:

Guest post: Let them call me whorephobic

What’s wrong with this claim?

It’s a ridiculous childish lie, that’s what. “Trans” is not an adjective like “tall” or “French.” It’s not even an adjective, in fact. It’s just a negation. It could be replaced with “not.” (“Not” is not an adjective.)

Trans is not a kind of woman, trans is a sneaky word that people use to pretend that sex is as fungible as length of hair or favorite color.

So, yes, actually, trans women are indeed a separate category that exists outside of womanhood. (Do we know what category that is? Why yes. The category is men. All trans women are men by definition.)

Oh no oh horrors queer Australians are staying home.

Queer Australians are axing travel plans to Washington DC’s World Pride festival, as Donald Trump’s executive orders targeting LGBTQ+ rights leads to fears of discrimination at the US border and potential attacks.

He isn’t actually targeting lesbian and/or gay rights though. I hate him as much as you do but that lede is just a lie. It’s the usual lie, the one that pretends lesbian and gay rights are the same as purported trans rights, when they’re not even close. Purported trans rights are about being believed and endorsed and pampered and worshipped as women if you’re men and men if you’re women. There are no such rights. There is no human right to force other people to participate in one’s games of Let’s Pretend.

The Guardian was contacted by LGBTQ+ Australians, including trans and same-sex couples, who had scheduled trips to the US to incorporate World Pride but in recent weeks ditched their plans.

Mik Bartels is among them. The University of Canberra student, who is examining LGBTIQ+ discrimination in healthcare for their PhD, was offered a scholarship that covered travel expenses to attend World Pride’s human rights conference.

Bartels had attended the conference at the 2023 World Pride in Sydney and found it valuable for their research. “It brings together people from all disciplines – community leaders, scholars, academics from around the world,” they said.

You’re impressed by the scrupulous attention to the “they”s and “their”s yes?

However, after an Equality Australia travel warning and recent reports of discrimination in the US, they decided to withdraw their acceptance of the funded trip.

“Given my appearance as identifiably queer, my academic profile being centred on LGBTIQ+ discrimination, and my online presence where I am openly queer, I was not confident that I would be able to get into the US without being detained,” they said.

What’s an appearance as identifiably queer? Wearing a T shirt with “QUEER” on the front? Wearing a baseball cap with same? Bits of metal through the lips and nostrils and eyebrows?

“I’m conscious of the US government’s list of banned words in academic research – my own research includes about 20 of those words.

“I’m also hyper aware of how I present myself online. I’m quite visibly queer in how I look and dress. I realised there was a very real possibility of being detained. I didn’t withdraw the acceptance lightly, but felt [that] for my own safety, I needed to.”

Oh gosh, they’s hyper aware of how they presents theirself online – you don’t say. Of course they’s hyper aware of how they presents theyself: they is hyper aware of everything to do with theyself because they is embedded in a wildly narcissistic ideology that teaches people to think and talk and do “scholarship” about nothing but their precious SELVES.

Missing out on the conference and World Pride was a “double whammy”, Bartels said.

“When you spend a lot of your life building the confidence to carve out a space for yourself, that becomes a lifelong journey. Opportunities to celebrate that journey and to demonstrate my relationship proudly are rare, so for this to be taken away, it can feel like a bit of a kick in the guts,” Bartels said.

Well, never mind, you’ll still have precious beloved Self, so you’ll never really miss out on anything important.

Ugh god this fucking guy.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney told President Trump on Tuesday that Canada “is not for sale,” nor will it be.

Trump has repeatedly threatened Canadian sovereignty, but Carney’s Liberal Party staged a political comeback by rallying against Trump’s annexation threats.

“Never say never,” Trump responded, to which Carney repeatedly said: “Never.”

Don’t you tell me not to say never you disgusting bullying pea-brained pile of shit.

No doubt that’s what Trump has said to women as he slammed them up against a wall and tore at their clothes.

Ahead of the meeting, Trump criticized Canada-U.S. relations on Truth Social. During the meeting, though, he said, “regardless of anything, we’re gonna be friends with Canada.”

Not while he’s in the job we’re not.

That’s the ticket! Harass the scientists until they get fed up and leave. Who needs scientists? We want advertisers and PR geniuses and movie stars, not scientists.

As the Trump administration slashes support to research institutions and threatens to freeze federal funding to universities like Harvard and Columbia, European leaders are offering financial help to U.S.-based researchers and hoping to benefit from what they are calling a “gigantic miscalculation.”

“Nobody could imagine a few years ago that one of the great democracies of the world would eliminate research programs on the pretext that the word ‘diversity’ appeared in its program,” President Emmanuel Macron of France said on Monday.

One of the former great democracies. We’re one of the crappier autocracies now.

He was speaking at the Sorbonne University in Paris during an event called Choose Europe for Science that was organized by the French government and the European Union.

It was unthinkable, Mr. Macron said, alluding also to the withdrawal of researchers’ visas in the United States, that a nation whose “economy depends so heavily on free science” would “commit such an error.”

It may be unthinkable that the US would, but it’s all too thinkable that Trump would.

Alarms in Europe began sounding when the Trump administration slashed jobs and froze science grants at leading American institutions as part of cost-cutting measures. European dismay increased when the U.S. government attacked diversity programs and attempted to dictate to universities “whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue,” in the words of Harvard’s president, Alan M. Garber.

Harvard has filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration over its $2.2 billion federal funding freeze. Mr. Trump mused last week about ending Harvard’s tax-exempt status.

The U.S. government has also fired staff at U.S. centers deemed to be at the pinnacle of scientific research, including at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the National Science Foundation, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health, the world’s largest funder of biomedical research.

At the same time, some federal agencies have removed words from websites and grant applications that were deemed unacceptable to the Trump administration. Among the terms considered taboo are “climate science,” “diversity” and “gender.”

Taken together, the actions have sent a chill through academia and research institutes, with scientists worried not just for their jobs but the long-term viability of their research.

Our loss is their gain.

Good move, Don.

From Antiques Roadshow to…

Axios is in a swivet.

Transgender and nonbinary people across the U.S. are navigating an upended sports landscape — on top of additional rollbacks of their protections and civil rights — following President Trump‘s February executive order banning trans athletes from women’s sports.

Same old lie. The issue is male athletes in women’s sports.

“If you can dictate my identity on a sports field, why can’t you then dictate my identity in different areas of public life?” asked Sydney Bauer, a rower, runner and journalist who covers sports and LGBTQ+ rights.

Stupid question. Stupid framing. Stupid choice of words. Nobody’s “dictating” anyone’s “identity.” Some people are pointing out realities and the areas where they make a difference. Nobody gives a fuck about Sydney Bauer’s idenniny; the fucks are given about what sex people are.

Trump’s Department of Education alleged last week that the University of Pennsylvania violated Title IX by allowing a transgender swimmer to compete on the women’s team.

Again: the issue is not “transgender”; the issue is male.

We know they know this, because they keep doing it. They are very careful not to say “by allowing a male swimmer to compete on the women’s team” because they know damn well that if they put it that way the problem leaps off the page. They’re carefully obfuscating and lying, in an effort to help men invade and ruin women’s sports. Nice.

You have got to be kidding.

Fears Trump’s foreign film tariffs could ‘wipe out’ UK movie industry

Trump’s WHATS???????

Donald Trump’s threat to impose 100% tariffs on movies made outside the US could wipe out the UK film industry, ministers have been warned, as they came under immediate pressure to prioritise the issue in trade talks with the White House.

100%! Tariffs! On movies!!!

Well hey, at that rate, how about 100% tariffs on foreign books, too? Retroactive, of course. Make it hurt to buy a copy of Pride and Prejudice, Wuthering Heights, Middlemarch, Lucky Jim, The Needle’s Eye, Alice in Wonderland, The Origin of Species, The Rise Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire – just think of all the money to be made!

Donald Trump’s threat to impose 100% tariffs on movies made outside the US could wipe out the UK film industry, ministers have been warned, as they came under immediate pressure to prioritise the issue in trade talks with the White House.

Whatever. Why should anyone but the US be allowed to have a film industry?

In an extraordinary intervention, Trump announced his intention to impose the levy on all movies “produced in foreign lands”, stating that the US film industry was facing a “very fast death” as a result of incentives being offered overseas. The UK is among the countries offering film-makers generous tax incentives.

The US president said he had already ordered the commerce department and the US trade representative to begin instituting such a tariff. He said on his Truth Social platform the issue was a “national security threat” because of the “concerted effort by other nations” to attract productions. “Hollywood is being destroyed,” he later told reporters. “Other nations have stolen our movie industry.”

And Hollywood is relevant to US national security how exactly?

Here’s another stupid thing:

Statement on Supreme Court judgment on the meaning of ‘sex’ in the Equality Act 2010

We are leaders of centres, research groups and networks, of scholarship, teaching, learning, and expertise in gender, feminist, women’s and sexuality studies across the UK. We are dismayed by the recent Supreme Court judgment on the meaning of ‘sex’ in the Equality Act 2010.

Oh I see, they’re expert leaders and leader experts. They know things. They have expertise. They know more than we peasants and nose-pickers do.

This judgment, which states that ‘sex’ for the purposes of the Act refers to the ‘sex of a person at birth’, was handed down after a refusal to hear any testimony from legal experts on gender reassignment or from trans, nonbinary, or intersex people.

That’s shocking. It’s as shocking as handing down a judgment on the rights of non-gremlins without inviting a single gremlin scholar to give testimony.

We do not believe it provides more legal clarity on the relationship between gender and sex. Instead, it adds more confusion and gives more potential for transphobic opportunism and harm in an already fraught area.

For what? What tf is “transphobic opportunism”? Are we gender skeptics hanging around hoping for an opportunity to push a trans laydee into a mud puddle? Or what?

If anybody in this mess is opportunistic it’s the men who pretend to be women. They get opportunities to barge into women’s groups, discussions, rights, organizations, centers – everything. Women are not getting any opportunities out of the arrangement.

We are also deeply concerned by responses to the judgment by the Equality and Human Rights Commission and organisations such as the British Transport Police. These responses have already used the judgment to declare the exclusion of trans people from facilities and services, and to align policies with ‘biological sex’. 

Liars. That’s a brazen lie. Men who claim to be women are now being excluded from women’s facilities and services, because they are men. None of this is about “the exclusion of trans people”; it’s about not letting men force themselves on women.

This is their expertise? The boringly familiar “expertise” of saying “trans people” to disguise the fact that they’re talking about men intruding on women? Pffffffff. That’s not expertise, it’s just cheating and trickery.

We reject the framing in the media and in public discourse that puts women, and/or feminists, at odds with trans people. This is especially the case in relation to the inclusion of trans women in women’s spaces. Womanhood is lived; it is not biologically given or legally bestowed. 

Oh really! The expertise just gets better and better. Womanhood is not a matter of which sex you are, it’s about how you live. Grow your hair, put on lipstick, simper, point a toe, and you’re there.

There’s more. It doesn’t improve. It ends with a list of centers and institutes and similar.

Oy oy oy.

Trump admits not knowing anything.

Donald Trump said “I don’t know” when asked if he needed to uphold the US constitution when it comes to giving immigrants the right of due process as he gave a wide-ranging TV interview broadcast on Sunday.

Let’s be very clear. This isn’t some guy waiting to pay for his cigarettes at a 7/11, this is the fucking chief executive of the whole large bossy globally-busy country. He is supposed to know this stuff. Just for a start, he swore an oath to do exactly that, not once but twice. He swore an oath to uphold the constitution and says he doesn’t know if he needs to uphold the constitution. He says it in public.

In a sane world that would be impeachment right there.

“I don’t know. I’m not, I’m not a lawyer. I don’t know,” Trump replied when asked by Meet the Press moderator Kristen Welker whether he agreed with his secretary of state Marco Rubio, who had previously expressed support for the idea that everyone had the right to due process.

When pressed Trump continued: “I have to respond by saying, again, I have brilliant lawyers that work for me, and they are going to obviously follow what the supreme court said. What you said is not what I heard the supreme court said. They have a different interpretation,” the US president added.

Whatever their interpretation may be, we can be sure it’s not “Donald Trump can ignore the Constitution.”

Originally a comment by Artymorty on Then he announced an Australian DOGE.

I think a lot of people were dabbling in conservatism because they’d been alienated by the left’s creeping dogmatism. But with Trump 2.0 everybody realized no matter how badly the left had been tainted by extremism — and all of us in the gender trenches have the scars to prove just how bad it got — the right is dangerous, too, so much so that it’s become an existential threat to democracy.

I’m furious at the Liberal party. I’m furious at the CBC. I’m furious at pretty much all of Canada’s progressive apparatus. But I’d rather work to repair it than to see the conservative apparatus take over. Every time I read the right-wing National Post I’m reminded I’d rather see the CBC overhauled than dismantled. Every time I hear what the Tories or the People’s Party have to say on just about any issue besides gender extremism, I’m reminded that gender is the lone, tiny island of common ground between me and them, and the rest is a vast ocean of get-the-fuck-outta-here-with-your-backwards-bullshit.

Some stubborn optimism still lingers in me that Trump 2.0 will flame out soon and spectacularly — and in the aftermath the left will do some soul searching and come back to its principles.

I will give Rome Nero and when he is done with Rome, Rome will be done with emperors altogether. It will be bad, exceedingly bad… worse even than Caligula but they have to have the whole terrible truth about just how bad it can be before they come to their senses. Let all of the poisons that lurk in the mud, hatch out.

— Robert Graves, I Claudius.

Claudius was tragically wrong: Nero was indeed a disaster, but instead of spurring reform or a return to republican values, Rome simply continued deeper into autocracy. The imperial system adapted, survived, and endured for centuries after — often brutal; never democratic.

Claudius’s grim, utilitarian gamble was rooted in the belief that Rome still had a moral centre that could be shocked back into balance. History proved otherwise. Now the US has its Nero, and it’s facing the same test.

Seeing how high the stakes have gotten, Canada and Australia smartly decided not to take the bet.