Tom Harris in the Telegraph:

That is how events played out this weekend when the Brighton Centre played host to FiLiA, a Europe-wide feminist campaigning organisation who held their annual conference in the city. You might be forgiven for believing that the Sussex venue would be ideal for a conference debating women’s and girls’ rights. Brighton, after all, is Britain’s San Francisco, known for its high proportion of gay and trans citizens and a generally progressive outlook.

That’s just it though. The two don’t march together any more. Women and girls’ rights are one thing and trans ideology is another. The “gay” umbrella is full of gaping holes that let the rain in, because lesbians don’t necessarily want to be inclooosive of men who call themselves lesbians, and men who idennify as lesbians are intensely hostile to gender critical lesbians.

You would be mistaken, however. The city “welcomed” the conference the night before it was due to open by sending along a gang of masked men who smashed windows and spray-painted graffiti on its walls in protest at the women being allowed to gather there.

Let’s face it, women over the age of 11 are a menace. They should all be locked up. It’s good enough for Kabul, so why not for Brighton?

Even worse, one of the city’s MPs offered no support to the delegates. Sian Berry, who represents Brighton Pavilion for the Green Party, tweeted that: “Events that inflame division and create tension should be guarded against and [Brighton and Hove Council] needs better policies for which events it will host in our council-owned venues. The choice of Brighton was clearly provocative from organisers and the problems predictable.”

Note how an elected representative makes such great effort to avoid blaming the vandals and thugs who carried out this act of intimidation; look how she blames the women taking part in the conference for “provoking” innocent men into breaking the law against their will. 

We did. We noted. We looked. We objected.

Imagine Raphael Warnock tweeted about anti-racism activists being “provocative” by choosing Yazoo City, Mississippi for a conference. Yes, that would be “provocative” in the sense of provoking attention to a long history of racism, and that’s a good thing. Brighton is way too much on the side of people who have decided women are the oppressor class. Brighton needs some provoking.

Does this victim blaming sound at all familiar? As the Labour MP Jonathan Hinder tweeted: “Why did she wind him up? She knows he’s got a bad temper!”

We know the trans army has a bad temper. We think it needs to learn to control that temper.

t wasn’t just the Greens who shamed themselves by their behaviour; their progressive stablemates, the Liberal Democrats, after reports of the night time attack, were only too happy to crow about how their own conference had been free from such violence and vandalism: “We thought the Brighton Centre looked much better when the [LibDems] had our conference there a year ago,” tweeted the party’s LGBT section.

Maybe that’s because Sir Ed Davey’s party is careful not to say anything that might upset certain sections of the community who are ever ready to slip on their size 12 stilettos and do some damage to anyone who disagrees with them. In this way, they guarantee “protection” for their events…

No no no it’s because they are so vulnerable.

Isn’t it?

Making up the triumvirate of shame was the Labour Party, which controls the local council and which refused to provide security protection for the women using one of its venues on the entirely unconvincing basis that it would be “disproportionate”, and not at all because they wanted to keep on the good side of the many trans people in Brighton who currently vote for them.

So interesting. Men bullying women is not disproportionate; stopping men bullying women is. Why’s that?

[T]he right of women to congregate and talk about their own safety is being fatally compromised. If female MPs like Sian Berry from allegedly “progressive” parties can no longer be expected to stand in defence of those rights, then who can?

The footsoldiers.

Originally a comment by Papito on The liberal capitulators.

Apropos of strange bedfellows…

Now, faced with an economy crippled by war and sanctions, the Islamic republic is promoting its expertise to a global audience, hoping to attract transgender foreigners with the promise of inexpensive surgeries packaged with luxury hotel stays and sightseeing tours.

Desperate for foreign investment, Iran’s theocratic government has set a goal of generating more than $7 billion from medical tourism annually, according to Iranian state news media, about seven times as much as it earned last year. That objective has resulted in the proliferation of medical tourism companies, marketing not just nose jobs and hair transplants, but vaginoplasties, mastectomies and penis constructions through glossy English-language websites.

The article is full of the sort of pandering we’re used to – calling men “she” and women “he” if they want that, and bemoaning the terrible suffering of the “non-binary.” But the reality peeks through: Westerners are going on medical tourist junkets to Iran to get operations on their sexual organs because Iranian surgeons do this more than anybody, and do it for cheap. They’ve been practicing on all the gay people in Iran for decades.

I wonder what’s next for Iran. Perhaps they can start doing implants. They could match the organs they forcibly remove from the nation’s gays to Western sex surgery tourists and do simultaneous surgeries to maximize success. A unconscious gay tied to bed one, behind a curtain, and a self-hating Western lesbian getting the medical bargain of her life in bed two. Everybody wins, the trans and the theocrats. Well, except the gays. they don’t win.

Of course, the trans recipients would feel sad about the butchered gays for a couple days, but on the other hand, they’d be happy too.

Eric, a 45-year-old trans man living in Canada who requested anonymity to protect himself and his family from reprisals, said he had sought treatment in Iran because it was cheap. But he acknowledged the tension in seeking treatment in a place where others have it forced on them.

“I have heard a lot, especially among trans women, that because they are gay, and they cannot be gay in Iran, they try to do the surgery,” said Eric. “I’m really sad that gays and lesbians are not recognized in Iran, but on the other hand I’m happy for trans people because they can do what they’re willing to do.”

Well, we know what’s going on here.

London Mosque bans girls over 12 and women from charity park run

Girls over 12 are women: they can get pregnant, therefore they might get pregnant, therefore they have to be monitored and excluded and controlled at all times. All female people are sluts, and when they’re old enough to get pregnant from slutting, it’s time to exclude them and lock them up and terrorize them. If they rebel, it’s time to kill them.

A mosque has banned women and girls over the age of 12 from competing in a charity park run.

The fundraising event, called the Muslim Charity Run and organised by East London Mosque, follows a 5km route and takes place on Sunday. However, the event has been accused of discrimination for allowing only men, boys of any age and girls aged 12 and under to take part.

Well, of course it’s discrimination. Female people 12 and older are banned. That’s discrimination.

After being alerted to the event’s entry criteria, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) said it would assess the case, The Mail on Sunday reported.

Baroness Shaista Gohir, the chief executive of the Muslim Women’s Network UK, said the East London Mosque was “likely” in breach of the Equality Act.

Aisha Ali-Khan, a human rights campaigner, posted on X: “It’s wrong for the East London Mosque to ban women and girls over 12 from taking part in their annual park run. Being healthy and fit is a big part of Islam for all Muslims, not just the men!”

Yes but you see men don’t get pregnant. That’s the stumbling block. If a 13-year-old girl runs in a race she might get pregnant. Now do you see the danger?

Ah yes, the old “I’m not an abusive rageaholic bully, I’m a fierce warrior for justice” ploy.

The Times:

A council refused to grant a legal order shielding a feminist organisation from antisocial behaviour hours after trans activists smashed up its conference venue.

More than 2,000 people are due to attend the three-day conference hosted by Filia, which started on Friday. Organisers say the twice-yearly event is aimed at defending women’s rights and challenging sex-based injustices.

On Thursday night, under the cover of darkness, masked transgender rights campaigners attacked the venue in Brighton.

The activists, who call themselves “Bash Back”, later released video on social media of them smashing the glass frontage of the Brighton Centre, which they said was hosting a conference that would be attended by “hate groups”.

Yes, you know: groups that hate violence against women, rape, bullying, forgetting that women exist, all that stuff. So hatey.

The organisers of the conference told The Times that on Monday this week they submitted an urgent application to Brighton and Hove city council for a public spaces protection order (PSPO) over fears of an attack. Local authorities can issue an order to prevent nuisances or antisocial behaviour in public areas.

Filia said in its application that it expected trans rights activists to target the conference and try to disrupt the proceedings.

Legal papers submitted to the council cited an Instagram post from a group called the Trans Liberation Front on September 18. It described the conference as “Europe’s Largest Transphobic Convention” and invited protesters to “wear a mask and something colourful” and to “bring signs and noisemakers”.

Women must not be allowed to meet and discuss and have thoughts. Women must be drowned out and terrorized by angry men or the world will fall to pieces.

On Friday morning, after the vandalism of the night before, Brighton and Hove city council wrote back to Filia refusing their application.

Now that we see how urgent the need is, we refuse.

Canterbury Cathedral is in the news for having an art installation in the form of graffiti. The medium is removable stickers as opposed to being painted directly on the walls, so I don’t feel obliged to get very indignant about it. I do think it’s butt-ugly though.

I’m just not a fan of the style. Sorry not sorry.

Since we’re on the subject of art and fandom…there’s this muralist in Seattle who’s considered very hot shit, and his work is everywhere. Until very recently I thought it was a style as opposed to one guy, because I kept seeing it all over the city. You can see where this is going – I hate his work. I think it’s hideous, and I hate the fact that there’s so damn much of it. So I’m curious to see if anyone here likes it.

He’s very keen on the local mythical beast the sasquatch, and has done many renditions of it. He signs all this work with “henry” in a cartoon bubble.

I just think that’s ugly. It’s fine as a doodle in your own living room, but plastered all over the city…not so much. Am I crazy?

If you’re curious and want to see more, googling “henry murals seattle” produces a torrent.

Julie Bindel on the fad for bullying women:

As I headed to the conference, I saw the news on social media that trans activists had, in the middle of the night, smashed one of the large front windows of the conference centre, daubed slogans in paint, and put out warnings that they were having a call to arms. We walked past the usual array of blue-haired idiots shouting, “trans women are women”, “sex work is work”, “blowjobs are real jobs”, and “from the river to the sea”. Anything that is bad for women – be it prostitution, Islamic fundamentalism, or trans activism – these people support it.

Islamism and transism make strange bedfellows, and yet, the marriage is going strong.

Since the Supreme Court ruling, these men have become more and more aggressive, and their tactics ever more outlandish, for example, demonstrating in central London against the Supreme Court ruling, during which trans-identifying men urinated in public to make the point about them being “excluded” from women’s bathrooms.

But police almost always do nothing to deter them. Whilst they have arrested or issued warnings to women over the past decade for the terrible crime of “misgendering”, or posting criticism of gender ideology on social media, they don’t do the same [to men] even when the bar is raised much higher – when there are actual violent threats against women, and property destroyed.

There was no police presence this morning at the venue, and throughout the day trans activists have been posting self-congratulatory films of themselves committing criminal damage on the venue.

Because they’re trans and trans people get to do whatever they want all the time. It’s the law.

The liberal capitulators – those that have been going along with the demands of the “Trans Taliban” for all of these years – imploring feminists to “be kind”, or bleating about having a non-binary child who must not be offended, need to recognise they are enabling the worst kind of illiberal, autocratic behaviour. It is high time that all decent people speak out against this behaviour towards women.

Will they?

Nope.

Reem Alsalem steps up again.

UN expert calls for recognition of surrogacy as system of violence, exploitation and abuse, urges abolition

GENEVA (10 October 2025) – A UN expert today called for the recognition of surrogacy as a system of violence, exploitation and abuse against women, and called for the practice to be abolished globally.

“Surrogacy reduces women and children including girls to mere commodities, stripping them of their equality and dignity and encouraging their exploitation and abuse,” said Reem Alsalem, Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences in a report to the United Nations General Assembly.

The report examines the different manifestations of violence against women and girls related to surrogacy, focusing on drivers like patriarchal norms, sex and gender inequalities, economic disparities, and globalisation.

“Surrogacy is the result of commodification and commercialisation of women’s reproductive capacities, and it preys on and exploits women, particularly those from marginalised and impoverished backgrounds,” Alsalem said.

Her report highlighted physical, psychological, and economic violence faced by surrogate mothers and argued that this practice results in severe human rights violations including of their right to health, privacy, family and physical safety and increases the risk of enslavement, torture, inhumane and degrading treatment.

The Special Rapporteur said that emerging, available evidence points to serious risks for children born through surrogacy, including negative physical and mental health and development outcomes resulting from separation at birth from their mothers. Others include identity struggles, increased risk of statelessness, trafficking, and abandonment, and the arbitrary and forceful termination of their lives in utero at the discretion of the commissioning parents.

“Despite these harmful consequences, several State and non-State actors remain complicit in enabling surrogacy, including by downplaying the accompanying abuses and risks, and sanitising the practice, which is gravely concerning,” the expert said.

Alsalem stressed that a human rights-based, sex and gender-responsive approach to surrogacy requires the adoption of a global abolitionist framework that would end demand by penalising the commissioning of children via surrogacy or its facilitation by intermediaries. She also called for the decriminalisation of surrogate mothers, recognising them as victims and providing them with comprehensive assistance, protection, access to justice and reparations, and end their economic dependence on involvement in surrogacy arrangements. The report flagged the importance of raising public awareness, including through education campaigns on the harmful consequences of surrogacy.

Alsalem recommended ensuring recognition of the birth mother as the legal mother, with any transfer of parental rights permitted only through judicial adoption processes that safeguard the child’s best interests.

Other key recommendations include guaranteeing equal rights and access to services for children born through surrogacy arrangements, improving data collection, and strengthening international cooperation with a view to developing effective strategies to assist and protect victims.

Originally a comment by guest on Windownight.

I’m here at Filia and we’re hardly noticing the handful of young men hanging out in front of the conference centre making a lot of noise. The police seem to be doing a good job of keeping order, and patrolling temporary fencing set up to protect us going in and out of the building (and, now, to block off the front of the building from any repetition of the vandalism, as well as to keep them from pounding on the windows, as has happened at previous women’s gatherings).

The statement of Trans Pride Brighton (or bash back, I don’t remember which now), said that they feared retaliation and believed the ‘trans pride centre’ in Brighton would be attacked…as if any of us even knew where it was let alone had any interest in playing Sharks and Jets with these guys. And they ended their statement with something like ‘paint washes off but blood doesn’t’, which doesn’t actually make any sense but sounds like a threat.

Sian Berry on the other hand…

Well I’ll be damned. The BBC has managed to report on the window-smashing at the Filia conference without blaming or insulting or ignoring the women.

The title, in particular, took my breath away. Have the scales fallen from their eyes at last??

Trans activists vandalise feminist conference

Golly. Not terf conference, not evil bitches conference, not Rowling-approved conference, but feminist conference. Not activists but trans activists. Not protest or confront or reject but vandalise. No soft-soaping at all.

Police have launched an investigation after a venue in Brighton was vandalised ahead of a women’s rights conference.

Trans activists claimed responsibility for the incident at the Brighton Centre on Kings Road in the early hours of Friday. Masked figures were seen in online videos smashing windows and spray-painting the building, ahead of a three-day event billed as one of the largest grassroots feminist gatherings in Europe.

Note the absence of any insinuation that the women’s rights conference had no business being there. Note the lack of hints that feminists are evil if they focus on women rather than trans women. Note the second appearance of the word “feminist” without any surrounding insults or provisos.

The group said it carried out the vandalism because the conference was hosting “some of the most vicious transphobia in pop politics”, and warned of further action.

Previous guests at the charity’s conference have included JK Rowling, who has been called transphobic for her views on gender identity and allowing trans women into women-only spaces. The author retweeted a post on X which criticised the vandalism.

That’s the closest they get to re-assigning the crime, and it’s not very close.

Event organisers FiLiA said: “It is shocking and saddening that a conference for women to discuss domestic abuse, sexual violence and lesbian safety has been met with smashed windows, graffiti and intimidation.”

FiLiA CEO Lisa-Marie Taylor added that the charity “campaigns for a world free from patriarchy where all women and girls are liberated. The activities of a small, violent minority will not diminish the spirit of sisterhood and solidarity which FiLiA embodies,” she said.

The BBC neglects to add anything to undermine or sneer at those statements.

I’m stunned. I wonder if it will last. I wonder if someone has put a foot down.

H/t Acolyte of Sagan

Putting the plebs in their place.

Sums it up nicely.

Women must not be allowed to gather, speak, protest, argue, resist. Women must stay at home and be silent. Resistance is futile.

Trans activists have vandalised the venue of Europe’s largest feminist conference.

Purple paint was sprayed on the Brighton Centre and windows were smashed ahead of this weekend’s FiLiA conference.

Bash Back, a trans activist group that has claimed credit for the vandalism, posted a video showing masked figures attacking the venue overnight.

That’s not bashing back, of course, because FiLiA didn’t bash them. It’s just bashing. FiLiA planned to speak, and “Bash Back” responded by smashing windows. They are not Bash Back, they are just Bash.

[Julie] Bindel, who is speaking at this year’s event, wrote on X: “Trans activists have smashed one of the large front windows of the Brighton Centre – the venue where 2500 feminists are meeting this weekend to talk about male violence, misogyny and the like.

“Why can’t EVERYONE see this movement for what it is?”

Well you see it was the inclusive kind of bashing.

A Bash Back spokesman told Scene Mag: “Despite presenting itself as a feminist conference with ‘zero tolerance […] for transphobia’, FiLiA plays host to some of the most vicious transphobia in modern pop-politics.”

They added: “Speakers at FiLiA claim to advocate for ‘protecting women’s spaces’ and ‘sex-based rights’ but routinely advocate for the erasure of women’s bodily autonomy and self-determination. Their vile and hateful rhetoric that seeks to exclude and erase us leads to the same kind of discriminatory violence that kills hundreds of trans people every year.”

Really? Is that true? Hundreds of trans people killed every year (presumably in the UK)? It doesn’t sound true to me, because if it were true I think we would hear about it. A lot.

Neener neener.

Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for promoting democratic rights and fighting dictatorship, receiving the award despite U.S. President Donald Trump’s repeated statements he deserved it.

That’s a silly addition. Repeated statements that one deserves the Nobel Peace Prize do not make it surprising that someone else won it. Rather the contrary. If they want to mention the fact that Trump has been, grotesquely, demanding the prize like a toddler demanding more cookie, they should say, in a new sentence, something along the lines of “this will piss off Trump, because he’s been shouting that he should win it for years.”

Anyway. They didn’t obey his ridiculous demands.

Machado, a 58-year-old industrial engineer who lives in hiding, was blocked in 2024 by Venezuela’s courts from running for president and thus challenging President Nicolas Maduro, who has been in power since 2013.

Trump would love to do that, you know. What Maduro did, not what Machado did.

“When authoritarians seize power, it is crucial to recognise courageous defenders of freedom who rise and resist,” the Norwegian Nobel Committee said in its citation.

We may need them in the US in the near future.

More trumpian vengeance:

A federal grand jury in Virginia has indicted New York Attorney General Letitia James on one count of bank fraud and one count of making a false statement to a financial institution — charges that come after steady pressure from President Trump to prosecute one of his longtime political foes.

James, a Democrat who pledged to investigate Trump during her campaign, eventually sued Trump and his company for inflating the value of some of its properties, winning more than $450 million in the civil business fraud case. The financial penalty was later thrown out on appeal.

At one of his own campaign rallies last year, Trump called for both James and the judge in that case to “be arrested and punished accordingly.” The president has been persistent in his calls since taking office, writing “JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED” in a post on TruthSocial last month that was directed at Attorney General Pam Bondi.

And by “justice” he means “persecution of people who make trouble for Trump.”

Federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia spent months on the case this year. A Republican career prosecutor there determined there was not enough evidence to bring a case against James. Then he was forced out of his job by the White House, only to be replaced by Lindsey Halligan, a former insurance lawyer in Florida with no experience as a prosecutor.

Last month, Halligan secured an indictment against former FBI Director James Comey, who has pleaded not guilty to two felony charges.

Put the right people in, tell them they don’t get to say no, and there you are, all your enemies punished. Isn’t it fun to be a corrupt evil head of state?

Oh for god’s sake. Does it not occur to him that trying to bully them into giving him the prize negates the prize? It’s a peace prize, not a bullying prize. If it were a competition for who is the biggest bully, he would win in a walk, but it’s not, it’s a prize for peace-making. He’s not a peace-making guy. He picks fights multiple times every day.

Norway is bracing for the aftermath of the Nobel Peace Prize announcement on Friday as the Nordic nation has faced increasing pressure from Donald Trump and his administration to award it to the US leader.

How do they not see it? If you demand it with menaces, it become worthless to you. Trying to pressure people into giving it to you makes it as valuable to you as a half-empty can of dog food.

Trump’s aggressive push to secure the prize, including public declarations he deserves it and calls to Norwegian officials, has intensified with a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas and a possible peace deal. At the same time, the decisionmakers at the Norwegian Nobel Committee have signaled that this pressure has been futile.

Do the trumpies seriously think that demanding it will be successful?

In a social media post overnight Thursday, Trump’s son Eric asked his followers on X to “retweet if you believe @realDonaldTrump deserves the Nobel Peace Prize.” The White House official account on X posted a photo of Trump calling him “The Peace President” at about the same time.

Yo, Eric, I don’t think the committee makes its decision based on retweets.

Originally a comment by Artymorty on Stalling.

It’s truly fascinating watching the reactions from the UK left to the Supreme Court decision. I’ve always been fascinated by cults that collapse. What do doomsday cultists do after the deadline passed and the apocalypse never came? What goes on in their minds? The UK Supreme Court decision is rather comparable to that: an incursion of sobering reality that the delusional can’t simply pretend didn’t come to pass. It’s a devastating blow to the cult’s whole folkloric worldview and social structure.

Fascinatingly, many doomsday cults persevere even after their deadlines pass — the very ones they were so absolutely adamant were guaranteed to mark the end of the world, 100%, no margin for error — this is the day, and there’s no possibility that the apocalypse won’t come this time. And then the day comes to pass, and the apocalypse doesn’t. Yet, some of them stay with the group, more adamant than ever in its rightness, even in the face of its incontrovertible, humiliating wrongness.

(The Jehovah’s Witnesses were a doomsday cult, predicting specific dates for “Armageddon” from 1915 to 1925 or so, constantly revising as each day came and went. Most of the cult members walked away, shattered, but the hardcore only hardened: eventually they decided that Jesus did in fact come back and they witnessed it! But they’re still here on this mortal plain for now, for some reason or another. There’s some spiritual mopping-up to be done, loose ends to tie up, or something. I’ve no interest in the nitty-gritty of it. The details of their beliefs don’t actually matter. The fact that a tribal cohesion was formed is the bit that matters; logic was cut off for them from that point onwards, so who cares what crazy stories they’ve been telling themselves after that point.)

That’s the power of the human brain’s limbic system. We’re wired to prioritize tribal allegiance over rational thinking. It cuts off cult members’ access to their own critical thinking faculties so completely, they can’t process the most basic, simple, pieces of logic if they pose a threat to that tribal bond. The poor frontal cortex — the part of the brain that us non-cult-addled outsiders have such easy access to, and which can process so utterly, completely clearly that those poor saps have been led into a trap — that brain-processing region simply isn’t available to them, and therefore the basic facts of reality that only it can perceive, are quite literally invisible to them.

This was illustrated well in the HBO sci-fi drama Westworld, with its characters’ mantra, repeated incessantly: “That doesn’t look like anything to me.” It’s one of those puzzle shows, like Lost or Twin Peaks, where everything is a mystery. In this case, half the characters don’t know that they’re actually synthetic robots — biomechanical androids — living as cast members in an elaborate amusement park, while the flesh and blood among them are the wealthy patrons. But it turns out there are layers upon layers of illusion, and pretty quickly the viewer is puzzling through an intricate maze of artifice versus reallity. What’s fascinating and relevant here is the mechanism by which the androids are prevented from seeing the evidence that’s right in front of them, that they’re obviously robots: their artificial brains simply refuse to process anything that will give the game away. Upon being challenged with a photograph or any piece of evidence that they’re robots in a theme park, the inevitable response is a passive, “That doesn’t look like anything to me.”

“They cannot see the things that will hurt them. I’ve spared them that” says Anthony Hopkins, playing their creator. (Hammily. Entre nous, I’ve always found Hopkins a ham. Even his Hannibal Lecter was just a bit much for me, though I loved The Silence of the Lambs. Remains of the Day: another good film. Hopkins was still hammy AF in it.)

It’s a dark reminder to all of us that the primitive, tribal part of our brains, the ape that processes our monkey emotions, is ultimately in charge, and it only lets the critical thinking part pretend to take the wheel occasionally, only at times when the ape inside of us — the ape that IS us — doesn’t feel threatened. And boy, is it easy to trip the threat wire on our inner apes. You and me and every one of us is a slave to our limbic system: we’re easily wired up to ally ourselves to charlatans, and once that happens, we’re trapped. It can happen to virtually any of us. I’ve said repeatedly that GC Twitter turned into its own kind of tribe, and therefore fell into its own set of blind spots, inaccessible to critical thinking.

(I maintain that I’m a rare breed, somewhat uniquely immune to tribalism, owing to my uniquely traumatic childhood: because I had no friends and no tribal bonds to form as a child, my limbic system’s tribal-latching mechanism didn’t develop properly. And because it didn’t get wired up properly, because I had no friends as a feminine little boy, I’m better equipped to call out tribalistic bias when I see it. Which is fucking everywhere, all the fucking time. I’m a pain in the ass to virtually everyone, because I’m really really good at seeing everyone’s tribal biases, and I have a habit of saying so.)

Anyways, the UK Supreme Court decision that “trans women” are in fact men is one of those cult-devastating moments, like a doomsday clock ticking on past its deadline. And the way the UK left has reacted to it has had much of the same shape of cults facing their reckonings. The less-committed ones capitulate and let go. (Wes Streeting of the centrist Labour Party, for example, who finally gave in.) For the ones who’ve committed themselves too much to it, the sunk cost fallacy kicks in: like gambling addicts, they’re in a hole. They’ve sunk too much into asserting “trans women are women” and they just can’t bear the cost until it destroys their lives, and they hit rock bottom. Your Green Party nuts, your Owen Joneses and your Billy Braggs.

Creepy enough?

He’s a Vancouver Parks Board Commissioner. The responses to his ridiculous smug misogynistic announcement are many and scathing.

I disavow him. Are we supposed to say it three times? I disavow him I disavow him I disavow him. Nyah.

Talk about bad journalism…

‘This will not happen again’: Vancouver Park Board apologizes for hosting Harry Potter event

A motion calling on the Vancouver Park Board to officially apologize for hosting an upcoming Harry Potter attraction passed Tuesday in a unanimous vote.

Members of the city’s transgender, gender diverse and Two Spirit communities had expressed concerns about the decision to partner with the event this holiday season due to its association with J.K. Rowling, author of the seven Harry Potter novels.

Some spoke at Tuesday’s meeting, include Rob Hadley, a member of Vancouver’s S2LGBTQ+ advisory committee—and someone who previously read the books to their own children.

A motion where? Passed in a unanimous vote where? Expressed concerns to whom? Spoke at Tuesday’s meeting of what?

The reporter forgot to say and apparently no editor noticed. Is it a meeting of Vancouver parks people? Then you need to say so. Is it a group of people on a park bench? Then you need to say that.

It doesn’t get more intelligent as it goes on.

Rowling has denied her views are transphobic, but the billionaire author has battled with transgender individuals on social media for years—once suggesting trans “ideology” will “end up wreaking more harm than lobotomies”—and recently launched a legal fund to support challenges to trans-inclusionary policies in women’s spaces in the U.K. and Ireland.

News flash, brainless reporter: pointing out the dangerous stupidities of trans ideology is not “phobic”.

The word is meant to signal irrational dangerous hatred of a set of people for no valid reason. The critics of gender ideology reject and dispute the ideology. That’s not phobic, it’s rational.

Vancouver has embraced such policies since 2016 through the Transgender, Gender Diverse and Two Spirit Action Plan. Addressing the meeting, Ky Sargeant, of the non-profit group Qmunity, celebrated those efforts as having had a “measurable” impact on the lives of trans residents.

What meeting? You forgot to say. It really would be nice to know.

Several commissioners said they were unfamiliar with Rowling’s political activism when they approved the attraction, Harry Potter: A Forbidden Forest Experience, which was done in a closed-door meeting without a chance for public input.

“When decisions are made in the dark, these are the kinds of mistakes that happen,” said vice-chair Brennan Bastyovanszky. Going forward, he said, the city will seek to partner on events that “reflect the actual magic of this city, which is in how we actually treat each other.”

Each commissioner present offered a personal apology to the trans community as well, with Angela Haer promising, “This will not happen again.”

Good, but not enough. Did they pour ashes on their head, whip each other, eat rotting fish, slice into a vein?

Addressing the meeting, Hadley acknowledged the popularity of the Harry Potter series and the excitement many have for attending the event, but suggested there could have been other options that would have been “palatable for everybody.”

“A lot of people who have read the books have done as I have, and put those books up for sale,” Hadley added. “And donated the funds to transgender charities.”

That’s the ticket. Anything the trans communinny doesn’t like must be withheld from everyone, no matter how few people make up the trans communinny or how many people make up everyone else. If a billion people want Harry Potter in the Park and six trans people pitch a fit, the six trans people must win. Always. No exceptions. It’s only fair.