Politics and Culture
On that new digital ID system:
Digital forms of ID will soon replace paper docs. If you’re a disabled woman & want a female carer you may ask for proof of biological sex. But if data for digital ID is taken from any document other than birth certificate, the sex marker may be false. Who cares, say Labour MPs! https://t.co/bVexmfAgtl
— Miriam Cates (@miriam_cates) May 8, 2025
This is good.
There’s an astonishing quantity of nonsense being talked about the Supreme Court’s FWS judgment, still, including by otherwise reputable lawyers who should know better.
— Legal Feminist (@legalfeminist) May 8, 2025
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Full thread:
So let's get a few things straight.
Generally, in law, sex doesn’t matter. But it goes further than that: in many contexts — work, education, services etc — thanks to the Equality Act 2010, it’s positively not allowed to matter. Sex discrimination is prohibited.
Those prohibitions are subject to exceptions. In various everyday situations where sex does matter, you’re allowed to discriminate on grounds of sex.
So, for example, if you’re recruiting for a bra fitting job, you’re allowed to say you only want to employ a woman in the role.
You don't need any very special reasons to use these exceptions: they're provided for routine, everyday needs like single-sex toilets and changing rooms, single-sex swimming sessions, same-sex healthcare provision, and so on.
So what was For Women Scotland v Scottish Ministers all about?
The question the court had to answer (although it arose in a slightly complicated way) was one of perfect simplicity: what do the words, “woman,” “man” and “sex” mean in the EqA?
The answer was simple, too. Those words have their ordinary biological meanings. For the purposes of the EqA, a gender recognition certificate does not change the holder’s sex.
In other words, so far as the Equality Act is concerned (the single piece of legislation most concerned with the circumstances in which sex either does does not matter), trans women are men.
That bears repetition. The Supreme Court has decided that for the purposes of the Equality Act, trans women are men.
That means that all the exceptions in the EqA that permit single-sex services, schools, associations etc have to be operated on the basis of biological sex.
It means that if a service (etc) lawfully provided for women only, it will be lawful to exclude all men from it. All men, however they dress, however they identify, and whatever paperwork they may hold.
It doesn't just mean that it will be lawful to exclude all men: it means it will be compulsory to exclude all men.
That's because if a space or service purports to be single-sex, but admits men if they say they are women, it won't be single sex any more, but mixed. So it won't be a proper operation of a single-sex exception at all, and its exclusion of all the other men will be unlawful.
There's no way around this. A service is either single sex, or mixed sex. If it's mixed sex, it can't lawfully exclude some men because they are men, while admitting others who say they are women. If it's single sex, by definition it excludes all men.
The idea that a genuinely single-sex service might still face challenge as indirect discrimination on grounds of gender reassignment is, to coin a phrase, an obvious absurdity.
The slam-dunk justification would be: "We can't let you in, or we'd be a mixed-sex service. We'd lose the protection of whatever exception we're using, and we'd have to let all the other men in as well."
Let's get one other thing straight, while we're at it.
Women have been gaslit, bullied, threatened, dismissed, smeared, and sometimes physically attacked for standing up for these rights to ordinary, everyday privacy and dignity.
We have been told that even asking politely for these rights is "transphobic" and "not worthy of respect in a democratic society". Even the right to talk about such things at work has had to be bitterly fought for, in case after case in the employment tribunals.
Now the Supreme Court has authoritatively ruled that sex is real, and sometimes matters. In other words, what trans activists have tried to paint as a niche belief is now beyond doubt the law of the land.
That vindication leaves a great deal of anger in its wake. Anyone who instructs their lawyers to try to find a way of wiggling round the clear, unequivocal ruling of the Supreme Court can expect to have a fight on their hands.
For too long, a vocal, bullying minority has terrorised employers and service-providers into operating everything that should be single-sex on a "trans inclusive" basis, for fear of lawsuits.
Well, women fighting for their single-sex spaces now unequivocally have the law on their side.
So employers and service-providers will probably face lawsuits for a while whatever they do. If tempted to continue to permit men to violate the privacy of their female colleagues or fellow-customers, they should ask themselves a simple question.
"Do we feel lucky?"
As the Freedom in the Arts report showed, much of the creative world in the UK is now creative only in thinking up new ways to conform, and to demonstrate allegiance to the correct ideological positions. Jo Bartosch at The Critic:
Those hoping to reach an audience soon learn that colouring outside the lines is professional self-harm. The punishments are subtle but brutal. Books aren’t burned — they’re simply never stocked. Theatre commissions vanish. Festival invites evaporate.
This conformity isn’t state-imposed. It’s enforced by a neurotic and sanctimonious cultural elite. Behind every exhibition and funding bid lurks a politburo of clipboard communists — curators and commissioners more obsessed with ideological hygiene than aesthetic merit.
These dinner party bores seem to believe that we are on the cusp of a fascist uprising, and that the best way to deal with this is to suppress difficult conversations lest the impolite masses rampage through the dessert course. Consequently, the straplines and programmes of the UK’s major galleries have all the joy and creativity of a Stalinist five year plan. The Tate’s strategy boasts of an intention to “increase our holdings of women artists, LGBTQ+ artists, minority artists and artists of colour.”
Meanwhile the Barbican has a 17 point anti-racism action plan and is “rolling out zero tolerance training.” The Globe threatens to “create a diverse, inclusive and anti-racist organisation” meanwhile the National Theatre is committed to “making major strides in diversity and sustainability”. The only conclusion is that without the careful stewardship of their betters, galleries, theatres and literature festivals would become circuses of hate, with gay bashing in gift shops and KKK parades during the intervals.
In 1957, Russian-American artist Ben Shahn warned: “Without nonconformity we would have had no Bill of Rights or Magna Carta… no science at all, no philosophy.” He was right. The arts used to be a space for dangerous thinking, charting our progress as a species and helping us all to aspire to better lives. Safe art is not only unsatisfying, it is a product of fear and a sign of decline.
Culture follows courage. And right now, ours is moribund — ideologically policed, and creatively anaemic. Artists once acted as society’s conscience, not its compliance officers. If even they are too afraid to speak freely, who will?
It used to be rebellious artists against the stuffy establishment. Now, well…
Love him. https://t.co/cEORwELIFf
— Graham Linehan 🎗️ (@Glinner) May 8, 2025
Photographer Romain Jacquet-Lagrèze documents the high-rise towers of Hong Kong:
Amid the frenzied bustle that is city life, it can be difficult—and even dangerous—to stop and observe what happens above street level. For French photographer Romain Jacquet-Lagrèze, though, looking to the upper floors of residential buildings and commercial towers in Hong Kong has revealed an astonishing ecosystem.
In his new book, Echoing Above, Jacquet-Lagrèze documents the trees, birds, and men who occupy the city’s sky-high dimension. “Hong Kong’s unique density has made the city grow vertically, and I have been inspired by the different aspects that this density brings, from an architectural point of view and also how it has shaped the relationship between men and nature in this city”.
[Photos © Romain Jacquet-Lagrèze]
From the photographer's book Echoing Above.
You thought the Supreme Court ruling brought clarity, and cleared the way for the end of gender nonsense? Think again. There's a new government bill on its way:
Women’s rights campaigners have been warning ministers that the bill, 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.”
In practice, she says, “if you have a man [seeking] gym membership and he has a digital ID saying he’s female, you’re going to have to accept that. Currently it’s your choice what you would do with a passport with ‘F’ [for female] on it. It would be difficult to say no to him going into the ladies’ changing rooms or toilets, but not impossible.
“But if you’ve signed up for the ‘digital verification services’ you will have to accept Government sources as authoritative.”
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 god. It's the targeting of women which is deeply regressive. Especially vulnerable women who need specialist care. People like Stella Creasy just can't see beyond the fantasy of "the trans community" as the most persecuted minority ever, when in reality it's all about men in dresses and bad wigs imposing themselves in women's spaces.
Heather Binning, chief executive of the Women’s Rights Network, agrees with the Conservatives’ concerns. She says that the new law will essentially introduce gender self-identification – a system which involves the state adopting whichever gender an individual chooses to be known by – “through the back door”. “It flies in the face of the Supreme Court ruling,” she says. “It will be mayhem if it goes thorough as it is. If official documentation says a man is a female with the new system, employers and others will be inclined to accept it. This part of the Bill needs to be scrapped.”
One King’s Counsel (KC) specialising in equality law agrees that the digital ID “is in danger of becoming a de facto gender recognition certificate”, which allows individuals to legally change their gender.
For example, it could lead to incorrect medical treatment being provided for a person whose biological sex is recorded inaccurately. One GP explained how she had witnessed a woman who identified as a man receiving an initial diagnosis for an appendectomy, but when the consultant and anaesthetist later saw the patient they decided to ask about her biological sex. Having established that she was a biological woman, the clinicians reassessed her and she was confirmed to have had a gynaecological problem. As such, this lack of correct data could also put trans people at greater risk in a medical emergency. It could also cause a care agency to send a male nurse or care worker who identifies as a woman to provide intimate care to a female patient at home.
“The proposed Data Bill will put disabled people, particularly women, at more risk than they are already,” says Freeman. “Every instance of a disabled woman being made to feel uncomfortable, or even worse, will be the responsibility of those who voted it through as well as the disability charities who have stayed silent.”
Alice Sullivan, the University College London sociology professor who wrote the Government-commissioned review on errors in the state’s handling of data on sex and gender, warns that “the thing with data is, garbage in, garbage out”.
As Sullivan's report showed, the whole system of data collection on sex by the Office of National Statistics was fatally flawed by their obsession with gender identity. And here we go again.
“There are plenty of areas in which sex matters – it goes far beyond toilets,” says the KC, who asked to remain anonymous. “Of more concern is intimate care provision for people with disabilities, working in a rape crisis centre – people working in these fields need to know what the sex of the person wanting to work there is. They don’t want to know what their gender identity is.
“It’s preposterous to argue you can replace data about sex with gender identity. Gender is not a legal category so why would you need to record it? It would only be useful if you wanted to deceive someone about your biological sex and the whole point of having data and having this new ID app is to be able to prove things about yourself.”
“The NHS needs to know which of its patients and staff are male and which are female in order to fulfil its public service equality duty,” says Samantha [not her real name], a director of service transformation at an NHS trust. “If the data used for the digital ID is not accurate it drives a coach and horses through public bodies’ duty of care. The law says this must be achieved via biological sex, but data sets that don’t accurately record sex cut across all that. The same applies to chaperones for intimate care. That’s unacceptable and potentially unlawful because the patient did not consent to it. The new ID scheme would make the operation of the NHS really difficult.”…
Those familiar with the Bill as it is currently written are concerned it paves the way for a scandal waiting to happen, akin to the SNP’s endorsement of trans activism. In Scotland, Isla Bryson, a biologically male transgender rapist, was initially taken to a women’s prison, and Nicola Sturgeon drew fierce criticism for refusing to call Bryson a man.
“There will be some kind of equivalent of the Nicola Sturgeon/Isla Bryson scandal where the whole country will go ‘How did we get to this?’,” says Samantha. “And the politicians will just be left looking at their shoes. So let’s not mess it up in the first place.”
Yesterday we heard about the Pulitzer Prize awarded to Esquire for their “extraordinary, deeply moving account” of the “beloved” cross-dressing Alabama mayor. Now it's Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha who wins a Pulitzer for his Gaza war essays:
The Pulitzer committee announced on Monday that Mosab Abu Toha, a Palestinian poet from Gaza, had won the award in the “commentary” category for essays published in The New Yorker magazine….
The committee praised Abu Toha, 32, for his “essays on the physical and emotional carnage in Gaza that combine deep reporting with the intimacy of memoir to convey the Palestinian experience of more than a year and a half of war with Israel.”
A response:
Dear Members of the @PulitzerPrizes board,
My name is Emily Damari. I was held hostage in Gaza for over 500 days.
On the morning of October 7, I was at home in my small studio apartment in Kibbutz Kfar Aza when Hamas terrorists burst in, shot me and dragged me across the border…
— Emily Damari (@EmilyDamari1) May 8, 2025
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On the morning of October 7, I was at home in my small studio apartment in Kibbutz Kfar Aza when Hamas terrorists burst in, shot me and dragged me across the border into Gaza. I was one of 251 men, women, children, and elderly people kidnapped that day from their beds, their homes, and a music festival.
For almost 500 days I lived in terror. I was starved, abused, and treated like I was less than human. I watched friends suffer. I watched hope dim. And even now, after returning home, I carry that darkness with me – because my best friends, Gali and Ziv Berman are still being held in the Hamas terror tunnels.
So imagine my shock and pain when I saw that you awarded a Pulitzer Prize to Mosab Abu Toha.
This is a man who, in January, questioned the very fact of my captivity. He posted about me on Facebook and asked, “How on earth is this girl called a hostage?” He has denied the murder of the Bibas family. He has questioned whether Agam Berger was truly a hostage. These are not word games – they are outright denials of documented atrocities.
You claim to honor journalism that upholds truth, democracy, and human dignity. And yet you have chosen to elevate a voice that denies truth, erases victims, and desecrates the memory of the murdered.
Do you not see what this means? Mosab Abu Toha is not a courageous writer. He is the modern-day equivalent of a Holocaust denier. And by honoring him, you have joined him in the shadows of denial.
This is not a question of politics. This is a question of humanity. And today, you have failed it.
From Jewish News:
A Palestinian writer, recently awarded a Pulitzer Prize, has sparked outrage for repeatedly describing former Israeli hostages as “killers” and pushing disproven Hamas claims about the 7 October attacks.
Mosab Abu Toha, honoured for his New Yorker essays on Gaza, used social media throughout 2025 to mock, vilify and question the suffering of those abducted by Hamas.
In several posts uncovered by watchdog Honest Reporting, the poet denied torture, labelled female hostages “killers”, and described forensic reports of murdered children as “propaganda”.
There's a clear but unacknowledged archaeological boycott on researching ancient Israel. Why? Because the findings would show the ancient roots of Jewish civilisation, but the UN and the relevant Palestinian authorities refuse to let this happen: it contradicts the Palestinian narrative, and the "settler colonialism" myth. Seth Mandel at Commentary:
When it comes to Jewish historical sites in the holy land, even your most “moderate” academic seems to turn into ISIS—a destructive force seeking a new and permanent dark age.
But because academic archaeological journals aren’t exactly the stuff of ratings, we don’t hear about it very much unless we go looking for it. So credit to journalist Amelie Botbol, who has been following an important story playing out in obscure places.
At Fox News, the Tel Aviv-based Botbol highlights recent stories from an Israeli news service that deserve attention.
In late April, the Press Service of Israel (TPS) covered the blacklisting of researchers who study ancient sites in Judea and Samaria, because the area is over the “green line” and thus considered occupied territory by the UN. Now, one might suggest that, occupied or not, the preservation and exploration of history is pretty important.
And it is—which is why those who undertake it get blacklisted if their areas of study encompass Jewish historical sites.
“This boycott is very clever,” Moshe Gutman, head of a preservation nonprofit, told the news service. “After having publications rejected repeatedly, archaeologists learn to avoid Judea and Samaria entirely. The scientific community is effectively driven away from the area.”
Indeed, the story is full of examples of academics and researchers losing their standing, access, and career paths for the crime of even participating in studies of ancient Israel….
Botbol notes that the United Nations and other international forums play a key role in the denial of history because they have “automatic anti-Israel majorities” for any votes. Those same authorities turn a blind eye when Jewish sites are violated, as happened in Jericho. “The burial grounds of Hasmonean kings—the largest necropolis in the Middle East from the Second Temple period—have been plowed and used for farming and construction,” an Israeli think tank director told Botbol. “In one case, we found human bones scattered in the fields. The Israeli Civil Administration had to collect and rebury them.”
The good news? The boycott at least shows how, in reality, everyone knows that Jews are indigenous to the land, and "no one in the world argues in good faith for the “colonialist” interpretation of Zionism."
This is the anti-Semitism version of flat-earth theory. It exists outside the very idea of knowledge. That is what is so threatening to the academic world: Their defensiveness is a tacit acknowledgement that the Palestinian-fueled anti-Zionist narrative of the land is universally regarded as a made-up story.
If there’s a second silver lining, it’s in the form of a lesson learned the hard way. Israel is the only trustworthy steward of the region’s history. Those dark ages the academic world is working so hard to bring about? The state of Israel is what stands in their way, and it isn’t going anywhere.
From the Times – Abuse of Jewish students ‘out of control’ at UK universities:
Rising antisemitism at British universities has led to calls for a public inquiry as research highlights widespread abuse of Jewish students on campuses.
Students describe being verbally abused and facing violent threats across the UK, and university officials are accused of failing to take action.
One student at a leading British university watched a swastika being carved into a desk but after complaining to officials was told it was probably an “ancient Hindu symbol”.
Oh boy.
An “unprecedented volume” of accounts of abuse has been received by StandWithUs UK, an educational charity that supports Israel.
Baroness Deech, the first independent adjudicator for higher education and a former principal at St Anne’s College, Oxford, said the report “offers a chilling insight into the high levels of discrimination and even acts of violence that Jewish and pro-Israel students are subjected to daily across UK campuses”.
She added: “Universities appear to be systematically failing these students, despite these same institutions rightly taking a zero-tolerance approach to all other forms of racism and discrimination.”
Well yes. Jews don't count.
A student of history and politics of the Americas at University College London reported “relentless antisemitic abuse and harassment on campus”. They said: “It’s reached the point where I’ve felt unable to attend class. I’ve reported several incidents to the university, providing the names of the students involved, but none of the complaints have been properly addressed.
“I’ve been repeatedly heckled, alienated, and bullied by other students. I’ve been called ‘brainwashed by Zionist propaganda’, a ‘genocide supporter’, a ‘white settler colonialist’, and told that I am ‘racist by virtue of being Jewish or Israeli’.”…
A student at the University of East Anglia reported: “My campus has become a place where antisemitic displays, flags, posters, signs, are common … Student union representatives chant for Palestine to be free ‘from the river to the sea’ and a motion was even passed under that exact title.”
The university said: “As a university, we will not tolerate antisemitism, Islamophobia or any form of racism, hate crime, harassment, or discrimination. Some time ago, in autumn 2023, our campus was defaced with antisemitic graffiti. It was removed as quickly as possible and support was offered to students and staff distressed by it.”
These people…it's like Corbyn: couldn't mention antisemitism without adding "Islamophobia or any form of racism". It's shorthand for: go away, we don't care.
Rinse and repeat.
The Beeb's Children in Need, supporting LGBTQ+ young people across the UK.
BBC Children in Need are currently funding 37 projects to the value of over £2.6 million specifically focused on young people affected by issues of sexual identity and gender identity. Of the 37 projects 5 projects to the value of £400,000 are focused specifically on gender identity. These projects provide activities like group support and mentoring to help LGBTQ+ young people to develop a sense of belonging, increase their self-esteem and resilience and improve their overall mental wellbeing.
Pride Month is an opportunity to reflect on the importance of this support and the positive impact it has on young lives. Many young people may face a range of issues as they explore or question their sexual or gender identity, including negative impacts on their emotional wellbeing and mental health, bullying, discrimination and isolation. Therefore, funding the social support of these young people is more important than ever.
"It is also estimated that 1-2% of the population is transgender". The implication, in the context, is that 1-2% of children are trans. Nonsense, of course. But that's how it's framed.
Encouraging the fantasy that children can somehow be born in the wrong body – and then on to puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, surgical mutilation – is precisely what children don't need. It is, in fact, conversion therapy – transing away the gay. What they do in Iran.
🧬 Jews Are Indigenous. Period.
We sat down with Scottish-Jewish author @BenMFreeman, whose new book explores the deep-rooted connection between Jews and their ancestral homeland, Israel.
Ben’s book, The Jews: An Indigenous People, is out now.
Our full interview coming soon. pic.twitter.com/pYODJ6t5GK— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) May 1, 2025
Mick Hartley 