Jo Bartosch

I’m often sneeringly accused by all sides of being ‘obsessed’ with the rise of trans. And it's true that for the past few years I’ve not been commissioned to write on much besides. Consequently, I’m now one of a handful of journalists to become expert in the issue. 1/3

@jo_bartosch I sent a load of this stuff to senior @bbcnews execs in 2020. Hoping they might realise that ‘trans’ were not all the poor vulnerable victims the output portrayed. Crickets.

Trans activists are no different from the leering drunk who aggressively slurs 'what you looking at?' There's no appeasing psychos who are out for fight, they will find offence everywhere. Live by grievance, die by grievance.🤷‍♀️

Amnesty Ireland’s Director told me Amnesty doesn’t stand with hate, violence or anger. Watching the reaction to anyone critical of gender, I’d say that’s a standard they should hold a little more consistently. Thanks @AjaTheEmpress for the footage.

8 years ago I came across this. Oddly, in all that time I’ve yet to see any ‘terfs’ wishing death or serious harm on their opponents 🤷‍♀️

7/ So, as ever, the very best of luck to the redoubtable Allison, the woman who threw the first legal brick at Stonewall.

Always take legal advice. 👨‍⚖️⚖️

@ProtectTeach @Dangerm27439650 @l_kidsalone @SuellaBraverman @NoSecretLessons @LeoKearse @ThePosieParker Where’s it from?

@Dangerm27439650 @l_kidsalone @SuellaBraverman @NoSecretLessons @LeoKearse @ThePosieParker This slide has the option to add these letters in, so as a child you start with the empty Venn diagram of circles. The teacher then asks where they think everyone goes, as usual they've forgotten the poor pansexuals, now what circle would that be🤭

While sitting under your fan, waiting for the Footie later can you answer this slide on... Gender diversity/ Ages 14-16 years/ Slide 6 @l_kidsalone @SuellaBraverman @NoSecretLessons @LeoKearse @ThePosieParker

My latest banner.

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.

In one of our most-read pieces, @jo_bartosch argues fair-minded people could agree or disagree with Anne Widdecombe's opinions, but left-wing bigots hated her for not abandoning them thecritic.co.uk/why-they-hated…

@SDewherst @robjessel16 No idea, but I am determined to find out

@jo_bartosch @robjessel16 Could they have been made up by the person carrying out the cancellation?

.@robjessel16 & I received the SAR back from Stroud Brewery. I can only assume the complaints that led to our cancellation were either missed, given in person, or sent through personal channels. There was one factual email about our views. It took 3 months to dig this out. 🧐

🕯️Amnesty faces backlash. 📩 Read the highlights and the letters from @ChildrenOfTrans @transwidows @ForWomenScot @Transgendertrd @MensNetwork1 @AllianceLGB and many more. sex-matters.org/posts/updates/…

Shortly before the effigy stabbing started, a Green councillor did this rambling speech about about how feeling uncomfortable about sharing facilities with trans women was actually weaponisation of the patriarchy. Some might argue putting male feelings above female ones was a bit more patriarchal….

@genspect Ta!

One side writes letters, the other… ‘Green councillors at rally where protesters stabbed Andy Burnham effigy’ thetimes.com/article/90b804…

@ForWomenScot @latsot A friend recommended Beira's Place to me, as I never really had support. Mixed sex group CBT via NHS for "anxiety" wasn't helpful; the rape crisis local to me accepted -welcomed- men as service users and as staff. Now what do I tell my relatives? I'm going to the "bigot" place?

This is the question that is *never* answered and which @amnesty refuses to answer as well. Because trans already have the same rights as the rest of us in the West. But they want to decimate women's and LGB rights to take more.

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.”