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Department of Housing and Development Building, Washington DC.
Markel Building, Richmond, VA.
[Photos copyright Owen Davies]
Website here.
Blog
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Strange-looking buildings
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Not walking away from Harry Potter
: 40px”>Meanwhile, Lithgow is still puzzling on something. “No one complained when I agreed to play Dahl, but I’ve received so many messages about JK Rowling. Isn’t that odd?”
Well, at the risk of sounding glib: antisemitism is no big deal nowadays in the right progressive circles, though "anti-Zionism" sounds better. Being anti-trans, though? It doesn't get any worse than that.
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Sex and gender
g the distinctions. But some individuals and organisations have lobbied for gender identity to be collected instead of, not in addition to, sex with deliberate merging of categories….
It's not complicated.
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Not everything is about them
she could of course choose the alternative rape crisis centre.
Some men, trans-identified and not, disagree that even the most vulnerable and traumatised women should be allowed to exclude men from rape crisis centres, yet many women see a male-free space and service as the last or only chance of putting their lives back together. It takes immense courage even to pick up the phone to access help after rape. Yet, even at their worst moment, these women told by activists like Willoughby that their priority should be centering his feelings, pandering to his ‘identity’ and pretending that they don’t recognise his narcissism and aggression as a quintessentially male response to not being given what he wants, by women.
The simple truth is that no decent male, however they identify, would ever seek to breach the boundaries of women whose sense of self and safety has been shattered by their experience of male violence or rape. 98% of sexual predators are male. 88% of sexual crime victims are female. Beira’s Place exists because I saw an unmet need and the fact that we’ve been so busy since we’ve opened proves, not that women hate trans-identified men, but that this is where women feel safe enough to deal with trauma they might otherwise have had to carry with them forever.
As has been noted, many trans supporters (Maggie Chapman, Owen Jones) have been shouting ever since the Supreme Court ruling that women should have been spending their time and money on support for VAWG (Violence against Women and Girls) causes rather than being nasty to trans people. Well Rowling did just that – and they're furious about it.
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The news from BBC Arabic
— Josh Howie (@joshxhowie) April 26, 2025
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
From the Telegraph:
A journalist who appears prominently on the BBC’s Arabic channel to report from Gaza called for Jews to be burned “as Hitler did”, it can be revealed.
Samer Elzaenen has appeared on BBC Arabic more than a dozen times since the conflict erupted following the October 7 Hamas attacks on southern Israel….
In a Facebook post in July 2022, he stated: “When things go awry for us, shoot the Jews, it fixes everything.”
Elzaenen has also appeared to call for a repeat of the Holocaust, stating on Facebook in May 2011: “My message to the Zionist Jews: We are going to take our land back, we love death for Allah’s sake the same way you love life. We shall burn you as Hitler did, but this time we won’t have a single one of you left.”
He's not the only one.
Ahmed Qannan, another regular BBC Arabic freelance contributor, appears to have expressed his hope that Israelis wounded in a shooting near a Jerusalem synagogue, which claimed the lives of seven civilians on Holocaust Memorial Day in January 2023, would also die.
Writing on Facebook in response to a friend who stated “We want to see some throats cut”, Qannan replied: “Don’t give up on your ambition”. Qannan also described a 26-year-old Palestinian who killed four civilians and a police officer in a series of shootings in the Israeli city of Bnei Brak in March 2022, as a “hero”.
As the article goes on to state, these people aren't direct employees of BBC Arabic: they're freelance, which means the Beeb can continue to use them while denying direct responsibility. The wider point though, which the BBC refuses to acknowledge, is that any reporter operating inside Gaza must be Hamas-approved – otherwise they wouldn't be reporting and would most likely be shot. These two just happened to be a bit careless with their social media.
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A triumph of entitlement and narcissism
Janice Turner in the Times:
At last Saturday’s demonstration against the Supreme Court ruling, a burly, gravel-voiced, 50-something man in a baby-doll nightie was interviewed about lavatories. “If I walked into a men’s toilets like this, I’m just asking for trouble,” he said. “It only takes one obnoxious idiot.”
Maybe he shouldn't dress up in his fetish gear.
How is he treated in the ladies? “A woman wouldn’t do it. End of.” He’d just used female loos at Waterloo station and “none of the women batted an eyelid when I walked in. I’ve got no problem with going in the ladies. They’ve got no problem. So I’m not going to stop.”
Really, it’s a mystery why women in an enclosed space would avoid the eye of a broad-shouldered, tough-looking geezer in fetish gear. It’s truly a triumph of entitlement and narcissism to read such silence as approval, but if women are mere non-player characters in your life’s exciting video game, why would you clock their watchfulness, unease or fear?
It's not the violence these men are worried about in the men's toilets: it's the ridicule. They wouldn't be attacked: if anything they'd be jeered.
It's the same old story. Men are afraid of being laughed at; women are afraid of being killed.
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EHRC interim update
Useful update from the Equalities and Human Rights Commission – An interim update on the practical implications of the UK Supreme Court judgment.
Key information
The Supreme Court ruled that in the Equality Act 2010 (the Act), ‘sex’ means biological sex.
This means that, under the Act:
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A ‘woman’ is a biological woman or girl (a person born female)
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A ‘man’ is a biological man or boy (a person born male)
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If somebody identifies as trans, they do not change sex for the purposes of the Act, even if they have a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC).
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A trans woman is a biological man
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A trans man is a biological woman
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This judgment has implications for many organisations, including:
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- workplaces
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services that are open to the public, such as hospitals, shops, restaurants, leisure facilities, refuges and counselling services
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sporting bodies
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schools
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associations (groups or clubs of more than 25 people which have rules of membership)
In workplaces, it is compulsory to provide sufficient single-sex toilets, as well as sufficient single-sex changing and washing facilities where these facilities are needed.
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Pony, Montana
Arthur Rothstein, June 1939. "A ghost mining town. Pony, Montana."
[Photo: Shorpy/Arthur Rothstein for the Farm Security Administration] -
“Keir comes across as not exactly human…”
terested. “I don’t really feel like I need that. And it wouldn’t be a sincere apology. Keir comes across as not exactly human, not exactly involved in this and not empathetic and not understanding the issue.
“Sentiment can be written by someone else for you to say. Proper, deep-rooted understanding and empathy? That’s something you can’t manufacture, and that is very lacking in him when talking about this.”
Very lacking in him when talking about anything. He doesn't do sincerity, only that robotic "sincerity". By no means the only politician that's true of, for sure, but still…
Sir Lindsay Hoyle, the Commons Speaker, failed to call on Duffield to speak during PMQs. She wanted to ask the prime minister for an apology over Labour activists and members who had been sidelined and disciplined for offering pro-women views.
It's been suggested, plausibly, that this was deliberate. Hoyle and Starmer are old pals.
