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forces the world has ever seen. They couldn’t separate the political piece from the fighting; without the military victories, the political experiment could not take hold. They believed – as one fighter put it – that “if we can lead in battle, we can govern in peace and no one can question that.” To win means living in a world where you [don’t] have to survive under the horrors of ISIS and their political structure. And it would also mean showing girls and women around the world what women can do. 

Q: And the YPJ soldiers were closely watched on the world stage. The wives and partners of U.S. special operations teams on the ground in Syria followed their battles on social media, right?

So many people spoke with me about this, because they were so deeply moved by the courage and the heart of these women, including the U.S. special operations forces. One of them said, “At the beginning, I wasn’t sure what it would be like working with them. But their warrior ethos is the same – we kind of want our daughters to be like them.”

It was new for the special operations teams that their families would be following their work in real time and rooting for them. Some of their partners went on social media to learn more about Rojda and the others, and started following them on Twitter and Facebook.

Their families were very much like the American public, watching this David versus Goliath story play out – except that David was a woman. 

t, says she opposes trans girls participating in women's sports.

Ms Jenner, who came out as a trans woman in 2015, told a reporter: "It just isn't fair. And we have to protect girls' sports in our schools."

The Republican candidate for governor gave what appeared to be an impromptu interview to the TMZ website.

A number of US states are considering a ban on trans girls in women's sports.

Mississippi signed such a ban into law in March, although it is expected to face appeals. The Human Rights Campaign – the largest LGBT advocacy group in the US – says some 17 other states are considering similar legislation.

Well good for them. And good for Caitlyn Jenner.

Ms Jenner's views on trans athletes put her at odds with many activists in the trans community, who argue that legislation targeting trans children is dangerous and discriminatory.

On Friday, another transgender celebrity, Elliot Page, criticised the moves to ban transgender athletes from competing in girls' sports teams in some states.

Yes, we heard from the miserable Page yesterday: a new cultural hero, it seems, for having her breasts surgically removed. That's where we've got to, and the level of misogyny we've reached, with "gender identity".

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Graffiti, Woodgrange Rd, Forest Gate

Shop, Woodgrange Rd, Forest Gate
[Photos © Peter Marshall]

media in December.

The Canadian-born actor, 34, said having top surgery had allowed him to "feel comfortable in my body for probably the first time".

Top surgery involves the removal of the breast tissue to create a masculine chest.

Page said the surgery had given him a new energy, "because it is such a freeing, freeing experience".

"Not only has it been life-changing for me, I do believe it's been life-saving and it's the case for so many people. And because there is such an attack on trans healthcare right now, when already there's such lack of access."

The actor was referring to a swathe of laws in states across the US outlawing young transgender people from accessing certain medical treatments.

It might be useful to spell out what those "certain medical treatments" are. Appendectomy, perhaps? Are they turned away at A&E when they come in with a broken collar bone? No, of course not. We're talking about serious medical intervention with puberty blockers and the like – medical interventions which, after the Keira Bell case, young people below the age of eighteen were deemed here in the UK to be too young to give their informed consent to. In other words, these US states were behaving responsibly against the teenage gender-change cult. But clearly for the BBC – Stonewall Diversity Champions of course – this is "boo-hiss" time.

Page also used the interview to criticise moves by some US states banning transgender athletes from competing in girls sports teams.

"If you're not gonna allow trans kids to play sports, children will die," Page said. "And it really is that simple."

This is disingenuous – in other words, a downright lie. No one's banning trans kids from playing sport. What's being banned is men and boys playing in women and girls sport, which – if anyone's interested – is manifestly unfair to the women and girls. And those same tired old threats about suicide, which have no evidence behind them, and are just plain irresponsible.

The only positive from the whole wretched business is that, from that short segment of the interview I've seen, Page  – asked by Oprah what brings her the most joy – looks about as far from joyful as possible. She looks more like she's about to burst into tears. [Sorry, he, not she – it's such an effort getting those pronouns right.] So perhaps not the greatest role model – though he/she is certainly getting the attention.

Jack Delano, 1940:

July 1940. "Near Shawboro, North Carolina. Group of Florida migrants on their way to Cranberry, New Jersey, to pick potatoes."

July 1940. "Negroes from Florida and Georgia who travel by car and truck, following the potato crop northward. Migratory agricultural worker has his supper (a nickel pie and a glass of milk) at the railroad crossing at Camden, North Carolina."
[Photos: Shorpy/Jack Delano for the Farm Security Administration]

any more children. There were also injections, which “were just one of the methods of their cruel, heartless torturing and genocide policy,” she says.

The day she was taken to the black room she found a chamber with a table covered with tools and torture devices including stun guns, cudgels and iron rods to fix hands and feet in painful positions. The walls were hung with medieval-looking weaponry: an implement for removing finger nails; a spear; chairs with straps, bars and ominous holes. She was placed in an electric chair and interrogated by two men, including one in a mask, about the shepherd woman.

When she refused to admit any guilt they sent a current through her body and rained blows on her head, laughing as they did so. She kept losing consciousness and, realising she had to tell them what they wanted to hear, she confessed that she knew the woman from before.

Her torturers eventually lost interest and she was taken back to her cell. The old shepherd lady was accused of being a spy and when she denied it, Sauytbay says, she was taken to the black room where her fingernails were removed.

One day Sauytbay joined 100 prisoners who were summoned to a room where a woman of 20 or 21 was made to confess to texting good wishes to a friend on a religious holiday. She was thrown to the ground and gang-raped by three men. Guards watched the other inmates as the woman begged for help and when prisoners stood up to protest, they were immediately taken away. It was a test, says Sauytbay, to see who had been brought into line….

It's a grim read.

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[Photos © Jenny Lewis]

“font-size: 11pt”>In justification for focusing on gender instead of sex, Stats NZ claims that the very concept of female or male bodies is a “Eurocentric model and construct”. 

Sit back and marvel at how people – well-meaning intelligent people – can lose their minds in the face of the latest supposedly progressive ideology.

Stats NZ is motivated by a desire to collect data in an ‘inclusive’ way, meaning that everyone has a box they can tick that corresponds to how they feel about themselves. Inclusion would be achieved more accurately, however, by having a biological sex question followed by a gender identity question, and having such a question would no doubt be a positive change, providing more information and understanding of our community.  

By asking the question the other way around, Stats NZ is requiring respondents to agree with the quasi-religious idea that everyone has a gender identity. The definition given in the standard that “Gender identity refers to a person’s internal and individual experience of gender” is so vague and circular that it is surprising a body tasked with collecting facts about a population would even consider it as a valid data point.  

A further indignity to most of the population is that sex information is to be categorised as ‘cis’ or ‘trans’ man or woman, or non-binary. Although the standard warns that this classification “does not ascribe an identity to someone”, how did Stats NZ conclude that it is non-discriminatory and inclusive for the vast majority of people to suddenly be categorised, without consent, into a subset of their own sex? 

While affirming that “gender, sex and sexual identity are not interchangeable”, this new standard officially reinforces the ideological notion that what an individual ‘feels’ about their gender is more important than the objective reality of their biological sex. 

From the time when "rock'n'roll" seemed to be all about young Italian-Americans from New York.

Santo and Johnny on the Saturday Night Beech-Nut Show, August 1959:

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rwfqsjimRM&w=550&h=309]

Written by the teenage brothers in their bedroom at two in the morning, so the story goes. A precursor to the later Californian Surf Music with that steel guitar sound – though they don't get any credit for it in the Wikipedia entry. See also instrumental rock, and groups like the Shadows: Apache came along a year later, in 1960.

Here's a great version by Jeff Beck from 2010 – using tremolo instead of slide.

attack is being made under the hijacked rainbow banner is duping people into the belief that, by jumping on to the LGBT+ bandwagon, they are helping the LGB community, when instead they are harming us and, in the process, colluding with the creation of a hateful, intolerant and authoritarian culture in society at large: a culture that is also casually eviscerating women’s and girls’ sex-based rights and protections. Religious homophobia is back; but the new fundamentalist religion that drives this oppression drapes itself in the flags of extreme gender ideology and LGBT+ lobby overreach.

But read it all….

Update: see also, Nathan Williams – Sex deniers are the new flat earthers.

Pseudoscience has become a serious problem. From Covid conspiracy theories to climate change denialists, the spread of scientific misinformation threatens our health and the health of our planet. Now there’s a new pseudoscience as bogus as flat-earthism or creationism. But this time there’s something different: those who you might expect to fight against pseudoscience are turning a blind-eye — or in some cases spreading it. This is the phenomenon of sex denial: the rejection of one of the most basic facts of biology in the name of ideology….