Mick Hartley

And in Wales:

Women’s rights charity FiLiA had booked a stand at Plaid Cymru Conference, hoping to use the opportunity to talk to delegates and Plaid Cymru politicians about a range of grass roots campaigns they support.

With less than 48 hours to go, the charity was told that they would not be welcome, and their stall booking was revoked.

The Plaid Cymru message:

“While there are many issues and campaigns on which I expect we would agree, it has come to my attention that some of FiLiA’s positions are potentially contrary to the party’s values – for instance on trans rights. We welcome robust debate, but must balance this with the need for our delegates from all backgrounds to feel as though the party conference is a safe space for them to express their identity comfortably.

I regret therefore that we will be unable to welcome you to Caernarfon this week. I’m sorry for the late notice.”

No terfs, in other words. No debate. Sensitive trans identities must be respected.

Honestly, what's going on with these Celts?

At least that obscene Police Scotland event, where the assembled McPlods were confronted with the scenario of an activist called "Jo" who thought trans people should be sent to the gas chambers, is getting some attention. From the Telegraph:

A fictional trans-hating character called “Jo”, who women’s groups claim is an offensive parody of JK Rowling, was invented by Police Scotland officers, it has emerged.

The national force faced scrutiny this week over a “scenario” presented at an official hate crime event in which “Jo”, a gender-critical campaigner who, like Rowling, has a large social media following, states that trans people should be sent to gas chambers.

The Time for Inclusive Education (TIE) campaign group, which ran the hate crime event in collaboration with police, revealed the Jo character had been “written by officers at Police Scotland based on their expertise”

Their expertise?? Their complete capture by trans activists more like. The level of sheer misogynist aggression aimed at Rowling is getting scary – and now with official sanction.

Women’s groups said the revelation raised new doubts over the ability of police to impartially enforce new hate crime laws, which come into force on April 1.

That's putting it mildly.

Violent domestic abusers exploiting Spain's "progressive" gender identity laws – a familiar tale:

Spain’s Minister of Family, Youth, and Social Affairs in Madrid is raising alarm bells after locating multiple cases in which men convicted of domestic violence changed their legal gender identity. In a letter issued to the Minister of Equality, Ana Dávila-Ponce de León Municio detailed her concerns that the safety of female victims of violence was at risk due to Spain’s “progressive” approach towards gender identity.

In her letter, issued March 18, Minister Dávila-Ponce de León noted that she had become aware of six cases in the autonomous region of Madrid where men charged with violence against women had changed their legal gender identity — a process that was streamlined and made significantly easier following the enactment of Spain’s “Trans Law” in 2023.

In addition to updating their registered sex, three of the men made requests to stay in women’s shelters with the wives and children who had been escaping from them. So far, concerned staff at the shelters have blocked their access but may be violating the nation’s gender discrimination laws as a result.

But perhaps most disturbingly, an abuser changing his legal sex has a tremendous impact on the resources the victims are able to access. In one of the cases recently highlighted by El Mundo, a female victim of sexual assault was stripped of the special protection provided for victims of physical and sexual abuse because officials told her that her aggressor, who drugged and raped her in front of her young daughter, “was no longer registered as a man, but as a woman.”

In Spain, special gender-based violence charges exist, providing female victims of male violence specific protections and resolutions which can impact divorce or separation proceedings, custody, and other important factors. Victims of gender-based violence can also access special protections intended to ensure they are safe from their male abuser.

Because a female cannot be convicted of gender-based violence, male abusers who change their legal sex can avoid this charge and deny their female victims of those legal protections.

A simple as that.

In which the discussion on Lebanese TV reaches new levels of idiocy:

"The [Israeli] army has been depleted, and they need [new] active forces. Would you believe it that in the year 2000…  A friend who used to live in Brazil has told me that in Brazil, as you know, there are three phenomena the country is based on – football, drugs, and illicit sexual relations.

"As a result of all those illicit relations, many babies would be born, and they would dump them at the beach in Rio de Janeiro. My friend told me that the Jewish Agency would collect those children, and once a month, a plane would take off from Brazil to Tel Aviv… That was in 2000. These planes would carry on board children aged between five days and a year….

"They take them and raise them as Jews, even though they are not Jews. So the rabbis went up in arms, and said one cannot turn a non-Jew into a Jew. But the military establishment told them: 'Shut up! Israel’s security trumps any other consideration. We need soldiers!'"

 

Why, asks Patrick West at Spiked, did it take so long to ban puberty blockers? The trick, from groups like Stonewall and Mermaids, was to persuade people that trans liberation was the next step in a narrative of liberation:

The thinking among many has been that, ever since the Enlightenment, we have been on an emancipatory trajectory in the West. It began with religious toleration, then came the campaign for racial equality, moving on to women’s liberation and then, by the 1960s, gay liberation. With these goals achieved, the next step was surely liberation for the trans community. As [Helen] Joyce explains: ‘During the past decade, the trans lobby has been stunningly successful in selling false analogies… [such as] that separate toilets for men and women are like racial segregation and that insisting people can change sex is “gay rights 2.0”.’

The insinuation made by radical trans activists is that if you deny the validity of someone’s preferred gender, you also belong to the oppressive hegemony of white, heterosexual males (and, more recently, mainstream feminists). Indeed, this is precisely the argument made by the godmother of trans, Judith Butler, in her latest book, Who’s Afraid of Gender?. Here she writes that critics of gender ideology seek ‘the restoration of a patriarchal dream-order where a father is a father; a sexed identity never changes; women, conceived as “born female at birth”, resume their natural and “moral” positions within the household; and white people hold uncontested racial supremacy.’ This is mendacious sophistry. It suggests that anyone questioning trans must be a racist homophobe….

The trans movement’s treatment of children has done nothing to advance freedom or equality. It is primarily a tale of disfigurement, experimentation and exploitation. Hopefully, this dark chapter can soon be consigned to the past.

But, before we get too excited about the NHS puberty-blocker ban:

NEW: NHS England has announced that new youth gender services will provide masculinising and feminising hormones to children from ‘around their 16th birthday.’ This goes further than GIDS ever did: YPs cld only access hormones at 16 if they’d been on puberty blockers for 1 year🧵

— Hannah Barnes (@hannahsbee) March 21, 2024

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

"Just last week, it seemed that the new services would have no medical pathway, with NHSE ending the routine prescription of puberty blockers. Today’s announcement, which was not put out to consultation, appears to signal a move in the opposite direction."

 

From the Telegraph:

A teenage mental health service funded by the NHS is being investigated by health officials, amid accusations it is promoting the trans agenda and allowing the spread of dangerous anorexia advice.

The Kooth website, which is aimed at children aged 11 to 18, describes itself as an “online mental wellbeing community”.

But officials are examining safeguarding concerns, with accusations that those working for the site have directed schoolchildren to sites that promote the use of hormones and breast binding.

There are also concerns that the site’s moderators have allowed dangerous advice about anorexia to be shared, and failed to prevent young people bullying each other.

The website, which receives more than £3 million a year from the NHS, describes gender transition as “unique and beautiful”.

Unique and beautiful?? Yes, that could be something of a warning sign.

Critics have raised concerns that the service, used by more than 145,000 schoolchildren last year, has an agenda which affirms those who believe they are born in the wrong body.

Transgender Trend reported on this in July last year – Kooth: the online mental health platform spreading gender ideology. At last someone's listening.

The fuss over Justin Webb rumbles on. Last year the Today presenter, talking about trans players in chess, said "trans women, in other words males”. You might think it was a useful clarification since a lot of people are never quite sure which way round it is – are trans women men presenting as women, or women presenting as men? Anyway, predictably enough, a complaint was made which the BBC upheld, and Webb was duly censured for appearing to take sides in a controversial debate – rather than stating an obvious truth. The BBC's complaints unit took another look last month, and upheld the complaint. Webb had "breached impartiality rules". His comment "could only be understood by listeners as meaning that trans women remain male, without qualification as to gender or biological sex, and that, even if unintentional, it gave the impression of endorsing one viewpoint in a highly controversial area". Phew. 

Tim Davie, the BBC Director General, speaking to the Culture, Media and Sport Committee of MPs yesterday, denied that the Beeb was in any way biased in the trans debate. Webb should have said "biological males": that's the approved terminology. But, “we have to be kind and caring in this and listen to people and be nice.”

Former BBC journalist Cath Walton in The Critic:

Thanks to the final straining filaments of the public remit, we now know that BBC News has an Editor-in-Chief who believes his duty is to be nice to middle-aged men who imagine themselves to be women. 

It’s not to tell the truth about them — that they’re men. Heaven forfend anyone tries to tell certain people what they do not want to hear. “We have to be kind, and caring, and nice,” says Tim. His emphasis….

“I don’t think we suffer from bias”, he insisted, immediately before confirming that Today presenter Justin Webb breached BBC rules by telling the truth, in describing a trans-identified man as male. “This is all being whipped up in a way that’s deeply damaging to civilised debate.” 

This was served with the claim that the BBC doesn’t have editorial “no go areas”. Yet it is out of bounds to call men “male”? The lack of critical thinking here is stunning. 

Tim’s problem is that he’s being played. He’s not an activist — and neither is David Jordan, Head of Editorial Policy, who was sitting next to him — but they obviously swim in a sea of activism, and do not possess the acuity to understand the game. The BBC’s job is first, to tell us the truth, and then to add evidence and context. That’s pretty much it. Tim has fallen victim to a narrative that the truth is hurtful, so it’s better to disguise it, or leave it out altogether….

Tim really needs to start meeting groups of women again who might be able to enhance his understanding of impartiality and activism. He doesn’t understand, for example, that once you have decided that it’s not harmful to pretend that men are women, you have already picked a side. He doesn’t understand what a breach of journalistic principle it is to describe a lie as impartial, and the truth as biased.  

He also doesn’t understand — and would probably scoff at — the level of linguistic activism to which the BBC is relentlessly subject. It’s invisible to him.  

The BBC had already handed over the words “woman” and “man” to trans activists. Now it has gifted them the words “male” and “female”. We are reduced to “biological male” and “biological female”.   I’m sure Tim thinks he’s found a nice middle ground, where everyone will be content.

Not so. Activists will certainly come for “biological”. Some already are. Activists like India Willoughby say they are “biological females”, and some BBC journalists have been warned in conversations that the use of the phrase is itself transphobic.

Davie ought also to think that perhaps the reason he received only a handful of internal complaints about Justin Webb’s reprimand is that he runs a cowed organisation, where women are afraid to raise the issue for fear of bullying or career repercussions. 

It’s clear now, however, that gender theory capture has crept up to the top of the BBC.  We have an Editor-in-Chief who thinks that telling the truth isn’t nice. There’s no greater failure.

When a relative turns out to be a defector living in South Korea. From the Daily NK:

A family in the Sosong District of Pyongyang was banished from the city in early March after it came out that a family member had defected to South Korea, Daily NK has learned.

“The family was banished after the authorities found out that a family member who was recorded as deceased was actually living in South Korea,” the source in Pyongyang told Daily NK on Wednesday.

When a North Korean citizen disappears, the authorities initially record them as being “missing” and then label them as a “defector” if they are confirmed to be living in China, South Korea, or some other country. In that case, immediate family members who remain in North Korea are strictly monitored as “defector family members,” and even distant relatives face restrictions in their social advancement.

As a result, state security agents are often bribed by powerful or influential families to doctor the records so that defectors from those families are listed not as “missing” but as “deceased.”

That was what the Sosong District family had done when a family member defected in 2005, which enabled them to avoid any consequences until now. But when the Pyongyang state security department learned that the “deceased” family member was actually living in South Korea, the family was immediately kicked out of the city.

The family had apparently received money from the relation in South Korea via a remittance broker in Sinuiju, North Pyongan Province, several years before. However, state security agents recently arrested that broker and got their hands on a list of remittance recipients, which included the Sosong District family. 

“The families of defectors aren’t allowed to live in Pyongyang, the capital of the revolution – they’re subject to forced relocation, with no exceptions. This family had managed to remain in the capital by presenting their missing relative as deceased rather than a defector, but as soon as the truth came out, they were immediately banished,” the source said.

Well now. A BBC report from November 2014 – The gay people pushed to change their gender:

Iran is one of a handful of countries where homosexual acts are punishable by death. Clerics do, however accept the idea that a person may be trapped in a body of the wrong sex. So homosexuals can be pushed into having gender reassignment surgery – and to avoid it many flee the country.

Growing up in Iran, Donya kept her hair shaved or short, and wore caps instead of headscarves. She went to a doctor for help to stop her period.

"I was so young and I didn't really understand myself," she says. "I thought if I could stop getting my periods, I would be more masculine."

If police officers asked for her ID and noticed she was a girl, she says, they would reproach her: "Why are you like this? Go and change your gender."

This became her ambition. "I was under so much pressure that I wanted to change my gender as soon as possible," she says.

For seven years Donya had hormone treatment. Her voice became deeper, and she grew facial hair. But when doctors proposed surgery, she spoke to friends who had been through it and experienced "lots of problems". She began to question whether it was right for her.

"I didn't have easy access to the internet – lots of websites are blocked. I started to research with the help of some friends who were in Sweden and Norway," she says.

It's not official government policy to force gay men or women to undergo gender reassignment but the pressure can be intense. In the 1980's the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa allowing gender reassignment surgery – apparently after being moved by a meeting with a woman who said she was trapped in a man's body.

Shabnam – not her real name – who is a psychologist at a state-run clinic in Iran says some gay people now end up being pushed towards surgery. Doctors are told to tell gay men and women that they are "sick" and need treatment, she says. They usually refer them to clerics who tell them to strengthen their faith by saying their daily prayers properly.

But medical treatments are also offered. And because the authorities "do not know the difference between identity and sexuality", as Shabnam puts it, doctors tell the patients they need to undergo gender reassignment.

In many countries this procedure involves psychotherapy, hormone treatment and sometimes major life-changing operations – a complex process that takes many years.

"I got to know myself better… I accepted that I was a lesbian and I was happy with that."

Another case:

Marie, aged 37, is now staying in Kayseri after leaving Iran five months ago. She grew up as a boy, Iman, but was confused about her sexuality and was declared by an Iranian doctor to be 98% female.

"The doctor told me that with the surgery he could change the 2% male features in me to female features, but he could not change the 98% female features to be male," she says.

After that, she thought she needed to change her gender.

Hormone therapy seemed to bring positive changes. She grew breasts, and her body hair thinned. "It made me feel good," she says. "I felt beautiful. I felt more attractive to the kinds of partners I used to have."

But then she had the operation – and came away feeling "physically damaged".

She had a brief marriage to a man but it broke down, and any hope she had that life would be better as a woman was short-lived.

"Before the surgery people who saw me would say, 'He's so girly, he's so feminine,'" Marie says.

"After the operation whenever I wanted to feel like a woman, or behave like a woman, everybody would say, 'She looks like a man, she's manly.' It did not help reduce my problems. On the contrary, it increased my problems…

"I think now if I were in a free society, I wonder if I would have been like I am now and if I would have changed my gender," she says. "I am not sure."

Marie starts to cry.

"I am tired," she says. "I am tired of my whole life. Tired of everything."

The homophobic roots of "gender-affirming care" could hardly be spelled out with greater clarity.

Would the BBC publish something like this nowadays? Of course not. The only possible way they could present it, given their trans-friendly approach, would be on the lines of, "Iran, our latest report reveals, was years ahead of us in dealing with trans youth, and pioneered gender-affirming care" – but even they should be able to see that presenting Iran as a beacon of LGBTQ enlightenment would be a step too far.

Astonishing. The police in Scotland, it seems, are getting themselves all fired up on trans ideology, ready for the draconian new hate crime law. From the Telegraph:

Scottish police have been accused of targeting JK Rowling by inventing a fictional character called “Jo” who thinks that sex is binary and bizarrely calls for transgender people to be sent to gas chambers.

To the gas chambers?? That's a bit worse than "bizarrely". It's an extraordinarily offensive slur, which takes the whole exercise to a different level of sheer nastiness.

At an official Police Scotland hate crime event, attendees were presented with a “scenario” in which Jo is described as a passionate gender-critical campaigner who, like Rowling, believes people cannot change sex and has a large social media following.

Women’s groups claimed the character was a thinly veiled parody of the Harry Potter author, whose Christian name is Joanne and is called Jo by her friends, and fuelled unfounded conspiracies that there was a link between gender-critical beliefs and Nazism.

It's straight from the trans activist play-book: Nazis, genocide of trans people, a trans Holocaust. Delusional. And the police, astonishingly, are playing along with it.

The hate crime “youth engagement” event, held in February, was part of a programme of events organised by Police Scotland for LGBT history month.

Ahead of the enforcement of controversial new hate crime laws coming into force on April 1, other sessions were given to police officers in which concerns about male-bodied people having access to women’s facilities were mocked and described as “completely ludicrous”.

Meanwhile, the SNP’s controversial proposals for a ban on conversion therapy were presented as being part of continuing work to “achieve equal rights for all” and likened to the decriminalisation of homosexuality.

Scotland is heading for a very dark place.