Mick Hartley

Meanwhile – are we surprised? – Unison is going all out with the trans agenda. From the Telegraph – Trade union accused of betraying women by pushing trans-rights agenda:

A trade union has been accused of betraying women by debating a pro-trans motion while an NHS nurse fights her employer to protect single-sex spaces.

The motion is expected to be debated as Sandie Peggie, a nurse, continues with her employment tribunal against both NHS Fife and Dr Beth Upton, a male-born doctor who identifies as female who was permitted access to women’s changing facilities.

Ms Peggie claims she faced discrimination and harassment as a result of being forced to use female facilities in Victoria Hospital, Kirkcaldy, with a colleague she considers male, which the health board and Dr Upton deny.

However, the Unison motion, put forward by the union’s Camden branch, asserts that “trans women are women and trans men are men”.

It goes on to denounce the idea that allowing trans women to access female spaces will mean women lose rights and claims women have “a vested interest in standing alongside our trans comrades”.

Unison’s national women’s conference, to begin in Edinburgh on Thursday, is expected to pass a call to produce a “myth-busting factsheet” which would “counter the idea” that trans and women’s rights are ever in conflict….

One delegate attending the conference, a social worker, said it was “shameful and naive” to deny that self-ID policies could put women at risk.

“It saddens me that Unison, which has 75 per cent female membership, has as its first motion at its women’s conference one that seeks to undermine Equality Act protections for women,” the worker, who did not want to be named, said.

“Letting men who choose to identify as women have unfettered access to single sex spaces, as in the Peggie case, is a clear example of trans rights being in tension with women’s rights.

“The other issue here is attempts within Unison to shut down discussions of this issue. Women who are concerned that our rights are under threat are being silenced, forced to whisper in the shadows. It is Orwellian.”

The unions – last bastion of the old-school macho male left. Women, know your place. 

Possible backtrack, that is:

Labour shelves plan to make gender change easier. @HJoyceGender “If this news is correct, we welcome it with great relief. We’ve long argued that any change that makes it easier to obtain gender recognition certificates risks introducing self-ID through the back door." pic.twitter.com/asY8dyxOgI

— Sex Matters (@SexMattersOrg) February 9, 2025

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How predictable. Presidents of three US evolution and ecology societies (The Society for the Study of Evolution, American Society of Naturalists, and the Society of Systematic Biologists) have written a letter to Trump: Policy: Letter to the US President and Congress on the Scientific Understanding of Sex and Gender.

Dear President Trump and Members of the US Congress,

As scientists, we write to express our concerns about the Executive Order “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism And Restoring Biological Truth To The Federal Government”. That Order states first, that “there are two sexes…[which] are not changeable”. The Order goes on to state that sex is determined at conception and is based on the size of the gamete that the resulting individual will produce. These statements are contradicted by extensive scientific evidence.

Scientific consensus defines sex in humans as a biological construct that relies on a combination of chromosomes, hormonal balances, and the resulting expression of gonads, external genitalia and secondary sex characteristics….

And so on.

No, the statements in the Executive Order are not contradicted by extensive scientific evidence, and no, scientific consensus certainly does not define sex in humans as a biological construct. The sex binary is one of the fundamental facts of mammalian – of animal – biology.

Jerry Coyne demolishes the letter at length here. His conclusion:

In the end, what we see here is three prominent organismal-biology societies having been ideologically captured to the point where they will twist and misrepresent scientific fact to buttress an ideologically-based view that sex is a spectrum.  These societies and their Presidents should be ashamed of themselves.  Scientific truth is not determined by pronouncements of the presidents of scientific societies, however notable these presidents may be.  The UBD [Universal Biological Definition] is one of the great (and few) generalizations in evolutionary biology, a definition that’s been immensely fruitful in understanding things like sexual selection. It’s a great pity that these societies are trying to scupper the UBD simply to buttress an evanescent form of gender ideology.

It's quite extraordinary – embarrassing -  to see Trump standing up as the representative of real science and women's rights, against the ideologically-driven nonsense of these members of the American scientific elite. The gender rot has deep roots…

The shapes of trees – mostly hornbeams – on a damp Sunday morning:

You were MP for a party with a cult-like adherence to a bonkers dogma that decrees children should be pumped full of harmful drugs if they believe they are born in the wrong body. The Green Party have done more than anyone to make the green movement look batshit crazy. https://t.co/b6OU6D9C6z

— Darren Johnson (@DarrenJohnson66) February 9, 2025

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Jack Delano, March 1943. San Bernardino, California. "A completely overhauled engine being run on the slip track at the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad shops. This is done to break the engine in. Note that due to the greased track, the engine is standing still while the wheels are spinning."

[Photo: Shorpy/Jack Delano for the Office of War Information]

Sonia Sodha in the Observer on nurse Sandy Peggie and her case against NHS Fife – No woman should be forced to change her clothes in front of a male colleague:

Despite the law of the land enshrining that commonsense insight – that employers are obliged to provide separate changing facilities for their male and female employees – female staff working for this Scottish health board have been expected to share changing rooms with a male doctor who identifies as female. One nurse, Sandie Peggie, has brought an employment tribunal claim for harassment, sex discrimination and victimisation against the board, following her suspension after she raised concerns.

Peggie shared her account of what happened with the tribunal last week. She initially talked to her line manager on a couple of occasions, including after Dr Beth Upton, the male doctor in question, walked into the room while she was partially undressed. Her manager said she passed on the nurse’s concerns but didn’t get anywhere; Peggie said that if she were put in that position again, she would need to address it with Upton. This is what happened a few months later, when she found herself needing to use the changing room after heavy menstrual bleeding.

Peggie says she told Upton she felt embarrassed and intimidated; but the doctor claimed as much right to be there as she did. Peggie says she raised her previous experiences of sexual assault to try to engender understanding, and mentioned a recent case when a male prisoner had been put in a female prison. She described how she was “shaking with distress”. After this encounter, Upton put in a formal complaint, and Peggie was suspended for bullying and harassment.

The sheer effrontery of this doctor, who claims that he was the one who was left "distressed" and "afraid" by the encounter – see this BBC report for an (of course) sympathetic view of the poor trans suffering – with absolutely zero interest in the woman's concerns. It's all about him and his hurty feelings. 

Back to Sodha:

It is worrying that in evidence last week Upton did not seem to understand why a female colleague might not want to share changing facilities, and appeared to experience this as a personal affront. But the doctor is unlikely to be alone in that. The greatest responsibility lies with Peggie’s employer, who, instead of making separate accommodations for Upton, expected female colleagues to ignore the fact he is male.

Given the bravery required to take a legal case, this is likely to be the tip of the iceberg. A group of nurses in Darlington are also suing their trust as a result of having to share facilities with a male colleague. In a Sheffield hospital, female staff worried about sharing a changing room with one of their male colleagues were told, incorrectly, that the colleague in question had a right to be there. Outside the NHS, there have been many cases where employers have unlawfully elevated a male desire to be treated as female above women’s established workplace rights.

The idea that a man who identifies as female is literally a woman, and must without fail be treated as such, has become a cherished principle for some progressives. Politicians and women’s rights activists speaking against this have been excommunicated from the left. Slowly, but surely, this is starting to change in the UK: take health secretary Wes Streeting’s admirably principled defence of the Darlington nurses, for example.

Not before time. There is a cautionary tale from across the Atlantic, where Democrats’ stubborn and unpopular defence of men’s rights to self-identify into women’s sport has dropped the unlikeliest of moral victories into President Donald Trump’s lap, allowing a man accused of serious sexual assault to somehow position himself as a defender of women’s rights. Abandoning basic common sense for unpopular policies that put women at risk does not go well for the left.

Not just basic common sense: single sex provision is the law. But the Stonewall effect lingers on…

German photographer Lia Darjes, paying homage to the Dutch Golden Age, was inspired for her latest project when she a squirrel jump on her garden table:

“Of course, I’d seen this little spectacle a thousand times before, but at the time I was actively looking for my next topic,” Darjes explains on the origins of the project. “My previous project Tempora Morte had encouraged me to once again dedicate myself to my passion for still life. I saw the squirrel and thought: Hmm, can I perhaps recreate that?” Her imagination captured, the photographer came up with a new nocturnal routine: she would leave the crumbs and dirty plates from finished meals at her or her friend’s garden, set up a camera with a movement trigger and see what happens.

[Photos © Lia Darjes/Chose Commune]

Before and after the so-called “good care” of Hamas.

Or, Ohad, Eli.
I’m so sorry it took us this long to bring you home. pic.twitter.com/HsEhhgYgi9

— Hen Mazzig (@HenMazzig) February 8, 2025

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Look at the shameful Hamas ritual, with the armed masked men in full fascist ceremonial display, surrounding their starved emaciated exhausted victims:

We've seen this before – starved emaciated Jews being released from their captive hell-holes.

Added:

Eli’s wife and daughters and brother were murdered. He was starved by their murderers for 16 months.

Never again happened again. pic.twitter.com/LbRJeysQ71

— Josh Howie (@joshxhowie) February 8, 2025

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Eli’s wife and daughters and brother were murdered. He was starved by their murderers for 16 months.

Never again happened again. pic.twitter.com/LbRJeysQ71

— Josh Howie (@joshxhowie) February 8, 2025

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Arthur S. Siegel, May 1943. "Bethlehem-Fairfield shipyards, Baltimore, Maryland. Women workers during lunch hour."

[Photo: Shorpy/Arthur S. Siegel for the Office of War Information]