Mel

Immigration law botherer. Own teeth.

[Róisín Murphy @roisinmurphy]

I was told repeatedly from every direction that I had to say I was committing to “educating myself.” It was terrifying to observe and extremely hard to resist. I’m not saying I was perfectly consistent throughout my ordeal, but I would not say *that. I did, however, continue to educate myself; ironically and inevitably it went the other way.

[James Esses @JamesEsses]

🚨Puberty Blockers Trial Update🚨

It is with a heavy heart that I announce that we will not be appealing in our failed judicial review to stop the puberty blockers trial.

We looked at every possible angle for appeal but do not believe the merits are there, given how extremely high thresholds involved.

Make no mistake, the High Court judgment does not negate the irreversible harm that will be caused to children who take part in this trial.

Thank you to everyone who supported us during this campaign and I’m sorry to not bring better news.

I will continue to do whatever I can to stop this trial taking place and will be working with colleagues on alternative strategies over the coming weeks.

[J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling]

A man (Samantha Tempest, here abbreviated to ST) is arguing in court that he belongs in a group for menopausal women. It is pointed out to him that menopause is the cessation of ovulation and that, being a man who never started, let alone ceased, ovulating he does not belong in such a group. He disagrees. He says he's had 'menopausal symptoms' like hot flushes and brain fog. This is like me claiming to have been in the army because I once shot an air rifle and quite like khaki.

[Rosie Kay @RosieKayK2CO]

X - I need your urgent help.

My new film 5 SOLDIERS is due to screen at Hereford Military Festival at The Courtyard on Sunday 27 September.

It has been on sale since 7 May.

I have just been told it has sold ZERO tickets.

Zero.

This is a film about soldiers’ bodies, training, injury, courage, fear, comradeship, trauma, recovery and service. It was made after years of working with soldiers, veterans and military families. It is not party political. It is humane, serious and, I believe, necessary.

If we cannot sell tickets, the screening may not go ahead.

So I am asking directly: please help me save this screening.

Buy a ticket. Bring someone. Share this. Tag anyone in Hereford, the Armed Forces, veterans’ networks, military history circles, dance, film, culture or anyone who believes that art about soldiers still matters.

Zero tickets is not normal.

Let’s change that.

Hereford, Sunday 27 September, 2.30pm.
Booking link:
https://t.co/Le2BUp5gfb

Please RT and share!

[Diana Alastair💚🤍💜 ⚢ ❌❌✡️ @sappholives83]

In the UK, 11 trans people have been murdered since 2000.

In the same country, from 2009 - 2021, 16 women were murdered by serving or retired police officers. Not killed by officers in the line of duty — flat out murdered.

In 2022 alone, 11 British women were killed by male strangers. 12 were murdered by their own sons; 150 British women have been murdered by their own sons since 2012.

On average, a woman is murdered by a man in the UK once every 72 hours.

Where is the Day of Remembrance for the women murdered by their own sons? By their husbands, their fathers, their brothers? By serving police officers?

In the last 25 years, there have been nearly twice as many trans-identifying murderers than there have been murder victims - 20 murderers, versus 11 victims — and yet we’re told to believe that this is a genocide, while our own dead go ignored and unnamed.

These people are, per capita, the safest demographic in the UK, with a homicide rate of 0.38 per 100k (for women, it’s 0.50 per 100k, and for normal men, it’s 1.23.) but we’re supposed to believe that they’re being physically exterminated? Or is genocide another one of those words that has deliberately been stripped of its meaning, like “woman” and “female”?

Who gains when people are conditioned to roll their eyes at the word “genocide”? When “woman” has no meaning in law or policy? What is the end game here?

[LSE Academic Freedom @acfreeLSE]

The relevant questions are 1) why @UniofOxford and @OxfordLawFac have permitted this and 2) what they are doing to rectify this violation of the academic freedom of their staff and students.

[Maeve Halligan @MaeveHalligan]

"No, I don't subscribe to this 'kindness' - I'll tell the truth instead."

I spoke at the Cambridge Union last night about LGBs, children's safety and women's rights. Full video here:

[Sall Grover @salltweets]

@WomensNN You are 100% correct.
There isn’t a woman in the world who would have to take me to court to enter a woman-only space I created.
It takes a man for this case to exist.

[Sall Grover @salltweets]

Politicians could fix this issue - for free - in a sitting week.

An amendment to the sex discrimination act to reinstate the correct definitions of woman & man, plus clarifying that the ordinary meaning of sex is biological, would fix this issue.

The choice is simple: fall behind the rest of the world while becoming an ideological laughing stock, or crossing party lines to fix bad legislation & ensure no more Australian citizens are punished for acknowledging reality.

Any politician who says this issue is too difficult to fix is either malicious or incompetent.

[Sall Grover @salltweets]

I am absolutely devastated
Men who claim to be women have more rights than actual women in Australia.
It is women who are being discriminated against, not the men who claim to be us.

But in a sense, nothing has changed: we will all wake up tomorrow & men will still not be women.

[Mel @melrhind]

@jan_murray @mara_yamauchi @RCollumbell @OnChairs Sorry I had to dash off early! 😊

[Shambo of Luxembourg @BradfemlyWalsh]

@jwhitey98 Ah, I see you participate in Schrödinger's Parkrun - simultaneously so trivial for women that it's ridiculous and weird of us to want to change the rules and yet so important for men that any suggestion of a rule change has life-destroying consequences for whole groups of people

[Annemarie Ward 💜 @Annemarieward]

Let’s stop pretending this is complicated. It isn’t.
A male prisoner, convicted of a brutal murder, is being housed in the women’s estate. An allegation of sexual assault has now been made. And still we are expected to believe this is a “managed risk”.

It is not a managed risk. It is a foreseeable outcome.
You do not need hindsight to see this. You only need honesty. Women in custody are not a neutral population. They are among the most vulnerable in society. The vast majority have experienced physical or sexual abuse. Many carry long histories of trauma.

Addiction is endemic. In Scotland, the majority proportion of women in prison have drug or alcohol problems, and many have co-occurring mental health needs. These are not abstract statistics. They describe women who have already been harmed, often repeatedly, long before they ever entered a cell.

And into that environment, the state has chosen to introduce male-bodied prisoners.

That is not safeguarding. That is exposure.
What we are witnessing is not a failure of risk assessment. It is a failure of principle.

For years, the Scottish Prison Service has insisted it can assess individuals and safely place male prisoners in the female estate. That claim was always untenable. You cannot assess away biological reality. You cannot eliminate risk through forms and panels. And you cannot guarantee safety in an environment where the consequences of getting it wrong are this grave.

And now, predictably, we are here.

The most disturbing aspect is not the allegation itself, serious as it is. It is the inevitability of the response. There will be calls for calm. Assertions that the system works. Claims that this is an isolated incident.
It is not isolated. It is structural.

When policy elevates ideology above reality, harm stops being a failure and becomes the price paid to sustain the model. We know this only too well in Scotland’s addiction system, where harm reduction has shifted from a tool into an orthodoxy, and the consequences have followed accordingly.

And here, that cost is being paid by women who have no say in where they are housed, who they are housed with, or what risks they are expected to tolerate.

No civilised system should ask women, many of whom are already survivors of male violence, to accept that risk as the price of someone else’s identity claim.

This is not about prejudice. It is about duty of care. It is about safeguarding. It is about the most basic obligation of the state to protect those it holds in custody.

Until that principle is restored, cases like this will not be shocking.

They will be inevitable.

[J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling]

What better way could there be of repudiating accusations of misogyny than recommending an episode where three men instead of two discuss which rights women should be fine giving up - without, of course, mentioning the words 'women's rights.'

[Aja ♀️🇬🇧 @AjaTheEmpress]

@dcexaminer Yes we know, we tried to tell people but we got called bigots.

Signed, Terfs

[Campaign Against Antisemitism @antisemitism]

We are absolutely heartbroken that this is how low Britain has sunk. This horrific act truly plumbs new depths.

Hatzola is a volunteer-run ambulance service run by the Jewish community but catering to everyone, Jews and non-Jews alike, working with the NHS to save lives as fast as possible. They provide outstanding medical care at lightning speed every hour of every day, and fundraise to buy ambulances and equipment. They are truly a shining example of the Jewish community coming together to help everyone in the most fundamental of ways by giving the gift of life.

Burning their ambulances in an attempt to put them out of action is a truly repulsive act of antisemitic hatred in a Britain where Jews now have to keep everything from schools to synagogues under constant guard. Our society has become infested with the sickness of antisemitism.

In this case it is not only about catching the perpetrators and restoring the ambulances, but about politicians accepting that by tolerating everything from hate marches to hate preachers, they have created this sickening mess, and time has run out for them to act. The law must change, fast, but so must society.

The people spewing obsessive conspiracy theories about Jews, Zionists and Israelis are not social justice warriors, they are hateful bigots who are feeding this madness and must be stood up to and told as much by ordinary decent people.

[Hatzola @Hatzola]

We’ve received many messages asking how to support our life-saving work following the devastating arson attack in Northwest London.

If you would like to help Hatzola Stamford Hill continue responding to emergencies you can donate here:

https://t.co/ULh1g97oa1

Your support at this time means more than ever.

Thank you for standing with us.

[Rachel Moiselle @RachelMoiselle]

I have a lot of journalists following me and I am imploring you, if you are writing about the antisemitic attack in Golders Green, *please* emphasise these two things:

- Hatzola is a volunteer-driven, no-cost service that is *entirely* self-funded. It relies 100% on private donations and community fundraising rather than government or public NHS funding.

- While operating in largely Jewish areas, it services Jews and non-Jews equally.

You may not deem it necessary to include this information, and in a perfect world it would not be. However, these are the two lies being spread by antisemites in order to justify the attack and use it to spread even more hostility against the Jewish people. Please include these facts.

[Rachel Rooney @RooneyRachel]

Dedicated to #WomansHour 's tribute to #JenniMurray