TabbyTail

So what we are seeing now is not a conflict between the bigoted (or sensible) middle-aged and the progressive (or misguided) young, but between two generations of gender nonconformists whose approaches to resisting gender expectations are difficult to reconcile.

@MichaelMcGough3 @brendanwalsh53 @The_Tablet Isn't it just a question of understanding the use of language? The US legal system uses terms that aren't always clear to outsiders too.

@brendanwalsh53 @The_Tablet As an American I'm always struck by the opacity of British announcements of arrests/charges.

The Bishop of Northampton has been charged with two counts of rape, reports Ruth Gledhill for @The_Tablet. In a statement, Staffordshire Police said, “A man has been charged following an investigation by our Rape and Serious Sexual Offences team. Bishop David James Oakley, 70, who is White British, of Desborough, Kettering, has been charged with two counts of rape [of] a female under 16. It follows his arrest in September 2025 following an allegation made to police.” Oakley is due to appear at Cannock Magistrates’ Court on 14 August.  thetablet.co.uk/news/catholic-…

@runthinkwrite @patricksturg @CConcern Union activists started to believe that their role was to 'educate' their members not represent them.

Wihtout wishing to start a fight, there's an interesting contrast in this post. I acknowledge the work and resources that @CConcern put into this dispute, and, of course, respect the religious beliefs of the nurses who went down this road. But there is nothing specifically *christian* about the views expressed in the interview, as far as I can see. There's a possible world, not very far from the one we're in, in which this could be a post from the RCN or Unison, trade unions representing women workers who took seriously their responsibilities to represent workers, who took on NHS management, and won a victory, damages and an apology from the trust: who defended workers against management who disrespected their sex-based rights. We are in a world in which christian pressure groups seem to represent (some) women's rights better than the trade union movement. How did that come to pass?

@emmablack77 @GussieGrips @jk_rowling It probably helped though to make it very publicly clear that the funding was available to challenge noncompliance with the ruling, at a time when lots of people were expressing outrage at the SPS policy.

@GussieGrips @jk_rowling Not really, I think the women in prison were aware of the funding, before, from what I understand, friends & family let them know on visits & phone calls etc.

Do we think this was influenced by @jk_rowling offering to fund legal action by women who suffered detriment from SPS policies which break the law?

@ffenics @sharrond62 In many cases, it was trans activists who tried to prevent women from working on those 'actual issues' eg by defunding refuges.

@sharrond62 People who waste their time thinking trans people present an increased risk to women and girls are no friend or ally to women and girls as they are ignoring the actual issues that women and girls face.

Anyone that fights for the rights of males to be in women’s rape centres, prisons, sports, changing rooms or toilets is absolutely no friend or ally of women &children. Fight for a 3rd space. But stop using women as support creatures who don’t deserve the reality of sex based rights!

@non_binary77 @sharrond62 In this case, it is women wanting to sometimes segregate ourselves from men, and gay people wanting to segregate themselves as the opposite sex. People of colour also segregate themselves for support groups, as do religions. Do you really think freedom of association is fascist?

@sharrond62 Segregation, because history always looks well on those who implement it. Who next, the gay/lesbian/bi community? What about other religious groups? What about colour? With this fascist turn, did they know when appointing you that you are for reform?

@PhoebeFirefly @sharrond62 Have whatever identity you want, though defining yourself through identity is not healthy imo. Treating any identity as truth can lead to stagnation. Just don't encourage children to medicalise away gender nonconformity, and accept that bio sex is significant to most people.

Trans panic. It will lose over time and people preventing the freedom of trans people and their human truth will look like Anita Bryant but more forgettable. Trans people’s identities are a TRUTH and part of the diversity of humanity, just like intersex, queerness, varied sexuality. Choose to be wilfully ignorant of the hundreds of thousands of real trans people’s experiences and lives, or choose to drop fear and hate and learn to live with real people in a human society. They will keep being born, they will keep fighting for freedom. Queer history and lives have been destroyed for centuries by the white-supremacist patriarchy you uphold and celebrate. Women, trans and all minorities are in the struggle against the same oppression together. youtu.be/mL8knXMmiEg?is…

@JennyAscendant That's ironic, given that women have been bullied into giving up our freedom of association and even the words we use to describe our bodies and experiences because some in the trans community have such fragile identities they demand constant validation from everyone else.

“Women as support creatures” is quite revealing. Women are not being asked to act as anyone’s “support creature”—that says more about how you view women than anything else. The legal issue is how service providers lawfully design and deliver services under the Equality Act. That means considering sex-based provision, privacy, dignity, safety, gender reassignment, legitimate aims and proportionality. Turning women into props in a grievance narrative while pretending the Act creates automatic blanket exclusion is not defending women. It is denigrating them as fragile objects whose rights can only exist if another protected group is erased from the analysis.

@ffenics @jk_rowling Even if all that were true, it would have no relevance to the BBC's woeful misreporting.

@jk_rowling The truth is that transgender people exist. The truth is that there is no research that concludes your opinion about trans people, especially trans women, is correct. The truth is you are trying to exclude trans people based on very basic biology and ignoring the nuance.

Essential 🧵on the BBC and the internal battle being waged over truth versus ideology 👇

@JENBROOK8 @ifellonithonest Absolutely. So much time wasted trying to get the whole world to pledge allegiance to a lie. Let's just go back to single-sex spaces being for a single sex and gender-nonconforming children being accepted not medicalised, and let the tiny minority adapt.

@ifellonithonest Vast majority of Brits are far more bothered about the cost of living crisis and the housing crisis than your wierd obssession with the genitals of a tiny minority of the population. Can we just pause and deal with important stuff that affects all our daily lives, thanks.

Can we just pause a minute to consider how utterly bonkers mental it is, that it took 3 private citizens, 3 women, years of stress, fundraising, campaigning AND 3 COURT CASES ONE OF THEM TO THE SUPREME COURT, for the Scottish government to accept that women don’t have cocks

Yesterday the BMA annual conference voted, in effect, against the Leadbeater/Edwards Bill - and against the Parliament Acts plan. The bill is fundamentally flawed. They say assisted dying legislation MUST include at least six safeguards missing from the Bill. 1⃣Specify that assisted dying is not a medical treatment 2⃣Must not alter the fundamental principles of the NHS (Clause 41 explicitly permits this) 3⃣Require an opt-in model for all providers (not in the Bill) 4⃣Requires that resident doctors are to be specifically excluded from formal involvement (not in the Bill) 5⃣Requires that any doctor must undergo specific training and national accreditation (Bill gives ministers close to carte blanche) 6⃣Requires that the “co-ordinating doctor” for patients undertaking assisted dying must be on an assisted dying specialist register (not in the Bill

I am begging critics of the puberty blocker trial to stop getting lost in the weeds arguing about research ethics, Gillick competence, informed consent, fertility preservation and the like. The NHS’s refusal to complete the Data Linkage Study (DLS) before proceeding with a new trial is the ONLY argument worth making on this issue. Everything else is a distraction. The DLS would find out what has happened to all the children who have already taken puberty blockers. There is NO justification for proceeding with a puberty blocker trial before the DLS is complete. The entire programme of future research in this area should be informed by its results. The fact that the NHS is getting ready to run a live experiment on vulnerable children before it has even established the fate of those it has already experimented on is utterly damning. The deeply disappointing Dr Cass should be widely derided for her ridiculous comments on ‘harm reduction’. The DLS IS harm reduction. Critics of the trial must stop fighting on their opponents turf by quibbling over technical details. We need to relentlessly force the DLS onto the agenda and expose the shameful hypocrisy of the NHS. DO THE DLS. #DotheDLS bbc.co.uk/news/articles/…

Today is a good day to remind our politicians that public want politicians that make their lives better where they live and the politicians might not want to do that because they care about their own pet cause abroad or their narrow identity politic but politicians need to realise they cant blame the public or change them but the public can hold them to account and change them

@zatzi Don't forget the overly pushy staff.

I’m fascinated by how Lush survives. They pump high streets with the most repellent and obnoxious smells that make passersby sneeze and feel sick. The one bath bomb I was once given made the bath look like it was filled with urine from a dehydrated camel (photo). It smelt as bad too. On top of the vile smell and unappealing aesthetics the company has very divisive and overtly biased politics. How is that a successful business model?

@bally968 @francesweetman With Labour's majority, all he needs is the support of enough of the PLP.

@francesweetman The good people of Makerfield voted. And this is parliamentary democracy - a pretty good system that allowed the country to ditch Chamberlain for Churchill when we were really up against it. But Burnham might need a new mandate if he wants to do anything significant.

@WingsScotland !!!

Just had the most *apocalyptic* thunderstorm in Bath (where we do get good ones). Only rained for 10 minutes, but so hard that it did this in a part of town right up the hill that’s never flooded in known history.

@miroirdufou @jk_rowling And we should also let lesbians define themselves as same-sex attracted, and provide single-sex facilities for those who believe sex is defined by biology, right? If not, why is it okay with you to coerce some people and not others?

@jk_rowling And we should let them live as they please, without ridicule, or coercion, and adjust our choices about categorisation, and the language we use, and our social structures, accordingly.

You might find it difficult to do two things at once, Paul, but I find it remarkably easy to enjoy the millions I've made while continuing to care about women's rights.

@miroirdufou @jk_rowling So what does a trans woman have in common with a biological woman that justifies putting them in the same category?

@jk_rowling These assertions reflect choices about categorisation. made for specific uses. We know, so far, relatively little about how brain development (in terms of the structures that create desire, sense of self etc) relates to other sexual development. (cont).

‘My fear is simple: that abused, disabled and vulnerable women — already made to feel like a burden by those who control them — will be coerced into early deaths while the safeguards I fought for are quietly stripped away.’ Labour’s Naz Shah with a deeply moving piece highlighting the profound danger of the assisted dying bill. thetimes.com/comment/column…

@jules20thC @stuey_beef @RosieDuffield1 David Davies was supportive and hosted an 'A Womans Place' event in the Houses of Parliament back in 2018. Kemi has consistently spoken up since meeting Kiera Bell. spectator.com/article/this-m…

@stuey_beef Did any of the Tories care about this stuff when they were in charge? I can only remember @RosieDuffield1 standing up against it back then as well..,

Badenoch has chosen her ground carefully. She’s not trying to re‑write Cass or reopen routine prescribing; she’s going straight at the weakest point: an experimental protocol that makes participation the only NHS route to blockers and which has already been paused once for safety concerns. By forcing a Commons vote, she drags Labour MPs into the open on a question most of them would rather hide from their constituents: are you willing to vote, on the record, for giving puberty‑suppressing drugs to 11‑ to 15‑year‑olds in a trial your own independent reviewer describes as ethically and evidentially fraught? Her rhetoric – “no child is born in the wrong body”, “children must never be used as test subjects due to pressure from trans‑activists and bureaucrats” – is calibrated to align with Cass’s concerns while painting Streeting as captured by a lobby. Labour has left such a vacuum of moral clarity that the Tory leader can now cast herself as the defender of basic medical ethics and childhood, and that will resonate far beyond the traditional Tory base.

@WrathQueenof @jk_rowling @RooneyRachel @miroirdufou Well, they do say 'you could never understand so you just need to believe us'.

@jk_rowling @RooneyRachel @miroirdufou I’m just amazed the gender cultists haven’t followed the example of the Roman Catholic Church & just said ‘it’s an ineffable mystery: pray to accept it’. Yet.