Georgia Cross

I maintain, as I have done for the best part of a decade now, that what we're experiencing is a #safeguarding crisis. Everything else - women's rights, gay rights, freedom of speech, parental rights - are downstream of it. Get #safeguarding right and the rest *will* follow.

***None of our parents could ever have imagined that they might have to protect their child from the health service that is supposed to look after them.*** This is what people are not grasping Parents having to protect their child from the state- NHS, school, SS, Westminster

@DuncanHenry78 @LucyHunterB @VPointon I think you're both right. Lucy about Amnesty specifically. Duncan in that there are many onlookers (including MPs) who are looking at this debacle and making precisely those plans for finessing the fallout.

@LucyHunterB @VPointon The authors yes. But those contributing? No I don’t think they are crazy. I think it serves their purposes

Of course the aim of those pulling the strings behind this amnesty debacle was not to achieve the goal of getting away with casting everyone who disagrees as “anti rights”. It was strategic. And it is transparent to me. Think of it this way. Now we will have people arguing that no these orgs are not at all anti rights (true) and the “fair compromise” argument comes up again. We will now see people in power probably saying ah yes, see there is a conflict between women and gay rights - and trans rights. Amnesty will then say “ok we went a bit far” just enough to avoid censure. But do you see what they’ve then actually achieved? They’ve once again embedded the idea that “trans rights” are rights. Separate, special, distinct. Goal achieved. I don’t think those behind this believed or even intended to get away with it fully because the actual goal was to set up and entrench the idea that people pretending to be something they are not - have a special right to do that.

@QcWynter He was so much better. "I can tell you this. I can't tell you that. Loads to do before I can tell you more. Get in touch if you know anything. Try not to share anything unverified." It really isn't that difficult.

Just seen the press statement on the Widdecombe investigation given by Laurence Taylor, UK Head of Counter Terrorism Policing and the Met’s Assistant Commissioner for Specialist Operations. The man exudes high competence and authority. Makes such a difference.

Trans Widows Voices and @ChildrenOfTrans have received the same stock response to our letter to @AmnestyUK. It is not satisfactory and answers none of the material points we raised so we are considering what further action to take.

@DanniBrener Exactly. Never, ever, provide unnecessary supply.

“The antisemite does not accuse the Jew of stealing because he thinks he stole something. He does it because he enjoys watching the Jew turn out his pockets to prove his innocence.” — Jean-Paul Sartre In the same way, the TRA does not ask for data because he plans on reading and analyzing it. He asks for data because he enjoys watching women scramble to prove that we deserve rights and respect. Ladies, we do not need to prove we deserve rights to idiots who will never agree that deserve them. Do not play lackey for TRAs who will never care.

@leakylike @transwidows They are the worst of men.

@transwidows @GeorgiaXCross I remember it very well XX

It's not at all surprising that majority of @transwidows have to protect their identity Because their narc abusive ex husbands are angry, controlling & dangerous men See below 👇

@quelizinha @daniel_knauf @transwidows @jk_rowling Lovely to see you, too! IRL has calmed down a bit and resolved now, so here I am!

@GeorgiaXCross @daniel_knauf @transwidows @jk_rowling OMG so good to see you back! I’m not around much but have the odd flurry of posting! ❤️

Whilst I understand the detriment to Beira’s Place is real, and focussing on @jk_rowling get clicks it’s a shame that mainstream press coverage of the Amnesty debacle is not also focussing on us smaller groups listed who do not have the same power or influence to defend ourselves

@TheAttagirls 😍 I'm going to try to avoid the doom scroll and keep it under control! Of course it does. Thanks for writing it. I had a little cry.

@GeorgiaXCross Georgia, I can’t tell you how glad I am that you’re back! This WOTD strikes deep with me, for obvious reasons.

Woman of the Day nightclub hostess Ruth Ellis died OTD in 1955 at HM Prison Holloway, the last woman to be executed by hanging in Britain. Her death prompted a public debate about capital punishment. Ruth was born in Rhyl in 1926 and her family frequently moved when she was a child. They often changed surnames too. There are all sorts of possible reasons for this but one thing is certain. Her father preyed on and sexually abused Ruth from the age of eleven — she tried to fight back — as well as raping her elder sister Muriel who bore his child when she was 14. As a result of his unorthodox relationship with another young girl and his own predatory behaviour, Ruth had a very early introduction to alcohol and men. Pregnant at 17 to a married Canadian soldier, she ended up in dead-end factory jobs to support herself and her baby daughter. Not long after, the teenaged Ruth started nude modelling, followed by escort work, and at age 24, became a nightclub hostess. During the period leading up to, during, and after her trial for the shooting of David Blakeley in April 1955, she was excoriated in the national press for her “lifestyle”, her looks, and her working class background. Why are abused women drawn into relationships with abusive men? You’ll have your own thoughts and I have mine, but when Ruth married in 1950, her husband was a violent alcoholic 16 years older than her who knocked her around and refused to acknowledge he was the father of her second daughter. They split up. On the breadline again, Ruth started selling herself to make enough to get by. She tried to improve her prospects. She took etiquette and elocution classes and was promoted to nightclub manager in 1953 when she was 27. This brought her into contact with celebrities and people with money. That’s how she met David Blakely, a privately educated racing driver as well as a promiscuous bisexual and violent alcoholic. He was engaged at the time. Ruth herself was also in a relationship with Desmond Cussen, another alcoholic. None of this is promising, is it? In January 1955, Blakely punched Ruth in the stomach so hard that she miscarried. She often gave him money to placate him. He would often attack her when he was drunk. “He would smack my face and punch me…[and once] lost all control. His fist struck me between the eyes and I fell to the floor. Savagely he beat me as I lay there.” On 10 April 1955, Ruth went to a Hampstead pub where Blakely was drinking with friends. When he and a friend left the pub at 9.30pm, Ruth took a revolver out of her handbag and shot him five times, three times in the back. A sixth shot ricocheted and took off the thumb of a bystander. An off-duty police officer ran outside to find Ruth standing next to Blakely’s body. She said, “Phone the police.” Arrested and taken to the police station, she said, “I am guilty: I am rather confused. It all started about two years ago” and thanked the Detective Chief Inspector when she was charged. You know the rest. Less than three months later, Ruth Ellis stood trial at the Old Bailey for Blakeley’s murder. When Christmas Humphreys, counsel for the prosecution, asked her why she had shot him, she infamously said, “It’s obvious when I shot him I intended to kill him." It took 23 minutes for the jury to return a guilty verdict for murder, a capital offence. The Manchester Evening News reported, “And as Mr. Justice Havers put on the black cap, Mrs. Ellis, the mother of two children, turned to the prison nurse standing beside her and smiled gently. Then she turned and with a wardress’s hand under her arm, walked calmly down the steps to the death cell.” Within two days, her execution date was ”fixed for Wednesday, July 13, at Holloway Prison.” Her only chance of reprieve lay in the hands of the Home Secretary who was “set to study all the papers in the case.” There was no reprieve. Ruth was woken at 8.30am 71 years ago today at Holloway. She refused breakfast but accepted a glass of brandy from a woman prison officer, and accompanied by the prison governor, the prison doctor, a chaplain and the executioner, she was led to the place of execution. It was the shortest longest walk you could ever imagine. Prison staff described her as “the calmest woman who has gone to the gallows.” The Coventry Evening Telegraph reported: “Women wept and others prayed outside Holloway Prison”. Ruth was 28. Did she deserve to die? You’ll have your own thoughts about this too and I have mine. What I will tell you is that I knew the prison officer who sat with her the night before, a duty we called the death watch. I worked with that officer many years later. She never spoke of it except to say one thing. She had gone into that cell that night strongly in favour of capital punishment. She came out the next morning vehemently opposed to it. Ruth said: “Only a woman who had led a similar life to mine could understand how I was irresistibly compelled to do what I did.”

This is a good summary

@supertolerant The quality of parliament, and particularly the executive, is so degraded that it barely matters which side "wins". At this point, I'd vote for capable and competent of any stripe. If there was even such a stripe, which there isn't.

Imagine Nye Bevan doing something like this. We are ruled by pathetic children.

@TheAttagirls Oh, Lily. This is the first woman of the day post I've read since I've got back here. There is nothing I can say.

When I say I worked with that prison officer, it would be more accurate to say I worked while she sat staring into space, smoking. She was a barely functioning alcoholic. What did for her was sitting in the dock with Hindley and Brady behind a bulletproof glass screen in No. 1 court at Chester Crown Court while the Lesley Downey tape was played in court and admitted into evidence. She never spoke of that either except to say, “They should have got probation.” (Think about it. If they’d walked free from the dock, how far do you think they would they have got?) However, what made her reach for that first glass was sitting with Ruth Ellis in her cell the night before she was hanged, and helping to steady Ruth’s nerves when the staff arrived to escort her to the place of execution. I now understand why she reached for that first glass. She was a victim too, an invisible one.

@daniel_knauf @thespiralquirk @transwidows @jk_rowling Gossiping elsewhere already!

@GeorgiaXCross @thespiralquirk @transwidows @jk_rowling Spread the word. The more the merrier!

@daniel_knauf @thespiralquirk @transwidows @jk_rowling Ooh! I have followed!

@GeorgiaXCross @thespiralquirk @transwidows @jk_rowling Just wait til you see what I’m working on now. Not ready to formally announce yet, but check my stream for hints.

Kate Coleman, founder and (former) director of Keep Prisons Single Sex, has written back to say that the reply does nothing to answer her original questions.

The first person who spoke up about what was happening inside the breastfeeding group “La Leche League” was feminist @brupe here in the UK in 2024. She set up @MoMaBfing Two years later: it’s Katie Miller - the wife of Stephen Miller in the Whitehouse - who has seen this issue

@thespiralquirk @daniel_knauf @transwidows @jk_rowling One of my favourite ever shows.

@GeorgiaXCross @daniel_knauf @transwidows @jk_rowling Oooh, a Carnivale fan👍

@elniedunne Yet more badly drafted legislation with disastrous second-order effects visible from space. Our parliament is such poor quality. More important to fix than getting "your side" into power.

Write the law properly Or not at all