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Janice Turner on the Clapham vigil:

Before the police began their idiocy, when the Clapham vigil was just hundreds of sad women standing quietly or laying flowers, there was the bongo man. Up on the bandstand he drummed on and on, like a migraine. Whenever a woman stood to speak, he’d bang along, interpreting her words through the medium of bongo.

It was maddening. Just for once, I thought, can’t men stand back and read the room. A woman is dead, other women feel her fate deep in their bones. They have come here in grief and solidarity. Let women set the tone.

But no, a moment later a man took to the stage to address the crowd, a posturing, preening anti-lockdown type. When women told him to shut up, that this wasn’t his place, he mocked their distress. Another guy displayed a Free Julian Assange poster. Yes, just the name to invoke at a rally like this.

Woke blokes, unable to resist a political land-grab, making everything about them. Since forever. Put down your bongos, dudes.

I'm surprised she doesn't mention Sisters Uncut, the group who, more than any other, hijacked the whole thing. They're very much part of the trans activist movement. Read about them at the Glinner Update.

From the latest Private Eye, no. 1543:

For more on that Fair Play for Women victory, see here.

Fair Play For Women have today won their High Court challenge against the Office for National Statistics. The ONS has conceded that the proper meaning of Sex in the Census means sex as recognised by law.

The High Court has now ordered “What is your sex” means sex “as recorded on a birth certificate or Gender Recognition Certificate”. The substantive hearing listed for 18 March is vacated and ONS must pay costs of both sides.

The Guidance accompanying the question “What is your sex?” is now published, on a final basis, and directs everyone to answer according to their legal sex for the remainder of the Census.

Jason Coppel QC for Fair Play For Women argued that the sex question in the Census is “a straightforward binary question, not a choice” at the initial hearing on 9 March.

It seems scarcely credible, but this article has appeared in, of all places, Scientific American. Trans Girls Belong on Girls’ Sports Teams: There is no scientific case for excluding them:

The notion of transgender girls having an unfair advantage comes from the idea that testosterone causes physical changes such as an increase in muscle mass. But transgender girls are not the only girls with high testosterone levels. An estimated 10 percent of women have polycystic ovarian syndrome, which results in elevated testosterone levels. They are not banned from female sports. Transgender girls on puberty blockers, on the other hand, have negligible testosterone levels. Yet these state bills would force them to play with the boys. Plus, the athletic advantage conferred by testosterone is equivocal. As Katrina Karkazis, a senior visiting fellow and expert on testosterone and bioethics at Yale University explains, “Studies of testosterone levels in athletes do not show any clear, consistent relationship between testosterone and athletic performance. Sometimes testosterone is associated with better performance, but other studies show weak links or no links. And yet others show testosterone is associated with worse performance.” The bills’ premises lack scientific validity.

This is, of course, about far more than testosterone. Men after puberty have significant advantages over women in body strength, in terms of muscle mass, lung capacity, and bone size. The evidence is overwhelming and irrefutable. 

And all this talk about "forcing" transgender girls to play with boys: no one's marching these wretches to the playing fields at gun point. They can play with their biological sex, or they can form their own teams and events, whatever: they just shouldn't be playing with women. The whole farce is exposed by the point that the issue of trans men playing in men's sport never arises – for obvious reasons.

It's astonishing that Scientific American would publish such a piece. It's Lysenko revisited – a triumph of ideology over science. And, as a commenter at Jerry Coyne's site reveals, the author of the piece, Jack Turban, has taken at least $15,000 from a pharmaceutical company that makes puberty blockers.

What a disgrace.

tated that she wishes all the best for trans people, but opposes the current trans ideology on the grounds that sex is real, and to deny that basic fact is to erode women's safety. But she's always brought up in these situations as an example of "bad" feminism.

Anyway he's had a double mastectomy, Elliot, so that's something to celebrate. A wonderful example for all young girls struggling with puberty…

Regula Tschumi, “A Dance of Joy” (2019) © Regula Tschumi

Ximena Echague, “Soul of the Ganges” (2019) © Ximena Echague

pt”>[Why, asks South Korea's Chosun Ilbo in an editorial today, is the government so terrified of Kim Jong-un's sister?]

The latest from the Green Party:

The co-chair of the Green Party's women's committee was suspended from the party on International Women's Day because she asked if males are female, and this was considered 'transphobic'. This means Green Party Women now has a sole chair – a biological male pic.twitter.com/7v5KzSsfLt

— ripx4nutmeg (@ripx4nutmeg) March 16, 2021

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

This comes after last week's statement from Dom Armstrong on why he'd left the party.

-size: 11pt”>In this new world order, a man can walk into a kosher supermarket in Michigan and taunt its Jewish customers by asking them to read “Free Palestine” on his phone, post the video to Instagram, and receive hundreds of thousands of likes and comments from adoring fans.

This is the insidious hatred students like me are dealing with on campus….

He's having none of it. 

I’m sorry. If a Jew is called a Nazi on campus, is it really his or her responsibility to invite the offending student to share a bagel on the quad? If someone bans me from their organization, is it really my responsibility to, as one individual put it to me recently, “internalize ways in which I am not welcoming, and strive for a more intersectional approach to dialogues about oppression and power”? What the hell does that even mean? What other minority community would be forced to endure this jargon-filled hellscape? Every time Jews speak out about anti-Semitism, we're immediately told to endure a corporate diversity training seminar, one which concludes that it's still our fault for causing all the drama.

And yet for many in the Jewish community, this is a tolerable price to pay to sit at the table. Well, I don't want a seat at that table. I don’t want to be anywhere near that table. I am in fact determined to flip that table over.

This is the spirit of New Zionist Congress, an organization recently launched by Jewish college students….

he Propaganda and Agitation Department to produce to commemorate the building of the Pyongyang General Hospital last year. I'm beginning to think she's all gnat and no mud bath, this woman.

The North will be desperate for some kind of easing of sanctions, which are biting hard. So naturally, in the Pyongyang version of diplomacy, the situation is presented as one in which it's the US which is desperate for talks, and must approach with due deference. Let's hope Biden isn't fooled.

dec41f99200c img-responsive” src=”http://mickhartley.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/mt_imported_image_1758335979.jpg” style=”width: 550px” title=”Eskenazi13″ />
Medical School, Dushanbe, Tajikistan 2000 © Jason Eskenazi

Millennium, Red Square, Moscow 2000 © Jason Eskenazi

Pagan Holiday, Georgia 1997 © Jason Eskenazi

Paratroopers Day, Gorky Park, Moscow 1998 © Jason Eskenazi

Religious Procession, Azarmas 1991 © Jason Eskenazi

Sokolniki Park Dance, Moscow 1998 © Jason Eskenazi