Michael Sherin

[Jennifer Thetford-Kay @JenKteach]

As Sandie begins another tribunal; this time taking on her own union, the Royal College of Nursing, I hope she succeeds.

This could become a particularly significant hearing... Bethany Hutchison and Jennifer Melle have been called to give evidence. Both have their own experiences of seeking support from the RCN while caught up in disputes involving sex, gender identity and protected beliefs.

The tribunal is therefore not simply going to hear Sandie’s account of how one nurse says she was treated by her union. It is expected to hear evidence from other nurses about their experiences with the same organisation. These women are nurses. They have spent their careers caring for other people. Trade-union members are entitled to expect their union to represent them fairly and without unlawful discrimination.

So today: I stand with Sandie Peggie and every woman who should never be left to fight for her privacy and dignity; and certainly not without the support of the RCN or whatever Union is supposed to represent them!

[J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling]

Every glib, arrogant, virtue-signalling celebrity who’s broadcast the lie that kids will kill themselves if not allowed to transition deserves to have this read aloud to them non-stop through a megaphone for a year.

[Michael Sherin @Michaelsherin1]

@HJoyceGender Thank you for the reminder

[Sall Grover @salltweets]

Women’s rights went first because they were the easiest to take. But if the government & the courts can force you to deny that sex is real, binary and material, they can force you to deny anything. What is more terrifying than a country that will not let you acknowledge reality?

[Helen Joyce @HJoyceGender]

Wishing Sandie all the best for her hearing next week. She is doing women a great service at considerable personal cost. Tribunal hearings are stressful and take over your life. But without them, organisations will continue to flout the law on single-sex spaces with impunity

[Dennis Noel Kavanagh @Jebadoo2]

We're not having this.

This is about normal straightforward boundaries

Women have the right to their spaces and sports and female prisons and whatever

This has gone on long enough

Australia, we are watching you and what you're doing to this brave woman

We stand with her.

[Bev Jackson @BevJacksonAuth]

On this day four years ago, in a tribunal case brought by Mermaids and driven by the Good Law Project -- a failed bid to strip @AllianceLGB of its charitable status — Kate Harris was driven to tears at being forced by Mermaids’ barrister to defend the definition of “lesbian”.

When she recovered, she said: “I’m going to speak for millions of lesbians around the world who are lesbians because we love other women. We will not be erased and we will not have any man with a penis tell us he’s a lesbian because he feels he is”.

Kate will never stop fighting.
And neither will I.

[J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling]

Every politician and celebrity still chanting ‘trans women are women’ should be asked how they square their loud commitment to ‘kindness’ with this inevitable end point. Explain how your ‘feminism’ led you here. Tell us why the abuse of these women is so unimportant to you.

[J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling]

Western society is currently divided between people who know this is a man and are prepared to say so and those who know this is a man but lie out of obedience to an ideology. There is no third option. Literally nobody on earth thinks "Roxanne Tickle" is actually a woman.

[Helen Joyce @HJoyceGender]

Far worse than ridiculous. Sinister. Crazy. Terrifying. (And I'm referring both to the man who has destroyed something for women in search of validation, and to the women who are acting as his handmaidens)

[J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling]

I see that Stella Creasy is accusing me of leading a pitchfork mob against her, because I opined that she is less likeable and more hypocritical than the wild parakeet she mistook for an escaped pet.

For those who don’t know, Creasy is an elected politician and self-proclaimed ‘old-fashioned feminist’ who is ‘still fighting the patriarchy’. She’s more than once publicly defined herself against me (and my reaction was not to accuse her of leading a mob, even though I was probably averaging a dozen death threats a day at the point when the article below appeared.)

I thought it might be instructive for those of us who don’t share Creasy’s brand of ‘feminism’ to examine her campaigning record, so we can learn to do better.

Creasy wants women admitted to the male-only, exclusive, London-based private members Garrick Club, a change that would benefit rather privileged women like Creasy. Creasy is a mother who wants better accommodations for working mothers, a change that would benefit Creasy. Creasy takes selfies at a men-only Muslim march because that reminds everyone how non-racist she is, which benefits Creasy. Creasy asserts that ‘trans women are women’, which keeps her in good odour with her party’s most aggressive activists, and benefits Creasy.

However, keeping cross-dressing heterosexual men out of nurses’ changing rooms doesn’t benefit Creasy, because Creasy has never had to mop up other people’s piss, blood and vomit at work. Challenging the notion that a male basketball player becomes a girl if he says he is doesn’t benefit Creasy, who has no sporting ambitions. Speaking up against the patriarchy as practised by non-white men doesn’t benefit Creasy, who wants those selfie-opportunities. Criticising an ideological movement that persecutes, harasses and openly threatens women who don’t believe some women have penises wouldn't benefit Creasy, because she's already fully-signed up to self-id, where any man who says he's a woman must be taken at his word.

As the late Gloria Steinem said: ‘“Feminism has never been about getting a job for one woman. It's about making life more fair for women everywhere.’

Creasy the patriarchy-challenger is provably more than happy to cosy up to men and misogynist movements when it suits her public profile and career advancement, no matter the harms those men might be causing less privileged women. By Steinem’s definition, what Stella espouses is not feminism, but Creasyism, and I suggest the emblem for this brave new rights movement should be an indignant parakeet with severely ruffled feathers.

https://t.co/8lvktG2vI6

[Stella O'Malley @stellaomalley3]

I often wonder what’s going on in the offices of @IrishTimes and @rte when scandals such as the latest “chest-feeding males” breaks. I’ve no doubt they want to slide back into credibility and pretend “we all partied” during Woke 1.0.

But we didn’t.

People had their lives ruined. People like me had their reputations ruined.

I tracked the exact actions of the Irish Times and RTE that led us from a basically civilised society in 2017 to “chest-feeding males” in 2026
@nwl88444048

[Stella O'Malley @stellaomalley3]

How did an organisation devoted to supporting breastfeeding mothers and their babies reach the point where chest-feeding males seemed entirely unremarkable?

You can read it here:

https://t.co/E3hW9d7aun

[Stella O'Malley @stellaomalley3]

I breastfed my kids and it meant a great deal to me . When I needed support a breastfeeding group helped me. So I’d love to help the ALCI get back on the right path

Before publishing this article I contacted the ALCI and gave them an opportunity to respond. These are the questions l asked:

1. Is the ALCI National Conference scheduled for 9–10 October at the Ardilaun Hotel still going ahead? If not, has it been cancelled, postponed or moved, and why?

2. Is Jacob Engelsman still scheduled to speak on “lactation support for gender-diverse families”? If not, when and why was this decision made?

3. Was the ALCI Council aware, when Engelsman was invited, of his previous involvement with Frolicon and the nature of the presentation he gave there?

4. Does ALCI consider material concerning induced lactation in males to fall within the proper professional remit of an organisation whose work has traditionally centred on breastfeeding mothers and babies?

5. What is ALCI’s understanding of autogynephilia and kink in this context, and what professional safeguards does it consider necessary where sexual or fetish interests may intersect with lactation?

6. What is ALCI’s policy on safeguarding and the reporting of suspected child sexual abuse, and how does it ensure that members understand and comply with any legal and professional obligations to report safeguarding concerns?

7. An account on the ALCI website of members attending the 2019 ILCA conference in Atlanta has recently become unavailable. Why was this material removed, and when was the decision taken?

8. The names and biographies of ALCI Council members have also disappeared from the Council Members page, which now contains only a brief generic description of the Council. Why were the names and biographies removed, and when?

9. Were these changes to the website made in response to the recent public scrutiny of ALCI and its conference?

10. More broadly, does the ALCI Council believe that its recent approach to sex, gender and lactation reflects the views of its membership and the mothers who rely upon lactation consultants for professional support?

My article, in the next post, explores the issue

[Róisín Michaux @RoisinMichaux]

"Did you consider coming out in defence of those women, at all?"

I asked Mary Lou McDonald and the Lord Mayor of Belfast (both of @sinnfeinireland) about the exclusion of Women's Rights Network Northern Ireland from this year's Féile festival in West Belfast. @ni_wrn

[Michael Sherin @Michaelsherin1]

@ni_wrn That’s great news. Congratulations.

[Janet Murray @jan_murray]

If the legal definition of woman can include males, then women have no meaningful sex-based rights.

And if you think there are bigger problems in the world right now, imagine how much bigger those problems would be as a woman with no legal rights or protections.

[Michael Sherin @Michaelsherin1]

@MForstater They apologise to organisations they defamed, because they were threatened with legal action and then apologise to their activists for that apology….hypocrites!

[J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling]

In light of newly discovered information showing that Amnesty International UK had already defamed Beira's Place before its recent hastily withdrawn report, lawyers for Beira's Place have written to Amnesty again.

1/3

[The Countess @TheCountessIE]

This from a Belgian biology lecturer lays bare the reality of gender self-ID. Men changing legal sex by filling out a form, men in women’s prisons, sports, changing rooms, & fulfilling female quotas.

Feminists who object are branded “far-right”.

Pre-schoolers get to hear about the fake “Genderbread Person.”

Conversion therapy bans silence therapists.

Biology itself is treated as “sensitive material.”

It’s all too familiar now.

Ireland’s Gender Recognition Act 2015 has produced the same conflicts. Self-ID has enabled males in the female prison estate, challenges to women’s sports categories, mixed-sex facilities, and the erosion of sex-based language and safeguarding in schools.

Women & children deserve privacy, dignity and safety. Biology is not bigotry. Single-sex spaces are necessary for safeguarding.
#SaveWomensSpaces #TheseWordsBelongToUs
#TruthMatters