Another week, another series of articles talking nonsense about trans people in the Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph, and Times.

One story dominated the newspapers this week in relation to trans people and that was the one from Pride Cymru last weekend.

You will remember that a bunch of disruptive transphobes, who happened to be lesbians, caused problems by protesting and blocking the parade before being asked to leave.

As the week progressed, Julie Bindel, along with the Mail, Telegraph and Times, continued their campaign to erase the tens of thousands of lesbians all across the UK who support trans rights.

Lesbians ushered away from Pride march... after bust-up with trans groups Daily Mail29 Aug 2022By Richard Marsden Banner waving: A lesbian activist protests in Cardiff Stepping in: Police speak to member of Get The L Out at the march Rainbow parade: Colourful drummers out in force LESBIAN protesters accused police of ‘failing to protect’ them after officers told them to leave a Pride parade for ‘causing confrontation’ with trans activists and supporters. Members of anti-trans lesbian group Get The L Out UK had turned up on the route with messages on banners such as ‘transactivism erases lesbians’. It led to a confrontation between the sides including a lesbian and a transgender woman shouting at each other in a road. Organisers, Pride Cymru, said the activists had ‘interrupted’ the LGBTQ event on Saturday in Cardiff. Video footage showed an officer confronting the group to say: ‘At the moment, your march, this group of people, is causing confrontation between different groups of people.’ Women are then heard replying ‘we’re lesbians, it’s Cardiff pride’. The police officer replies, saying ‘whatever you are... at the moment, is causing confrontation’. One of the women is then told: ‘To make sure you’re safe, we are going to remove you from the road.’ A member of the Get The L Out UK group responded: ‘You should be ‘Went there to spread hate’ able to protect lesbians in a pride march.’ Angela Wild, a co-founder of the group, last night said she and fellow campaigners were ‘appalled by the behaviour of the police’. She said: ‘We feel it highlights the level of institutional capture by this ideology we are witnessing, that they would rather remove lesbians than engage with us.’ Miss Wild said she and other women wanted ‘to promote lesbian visibility within an increasingly misogynistic and anti-lesbian gay, bisexual and transgender movement’. She added the group’s members – who want the letter L removed from the LGBTQ+ acronym because they believe lesbians are no longer represented – have received a backlash including being subject to rape threats and death threats. The group is considering making a formal complaint about the South Wales force. Former Wimbledon women’s champion and prominent lesbian Martina Navratilova was among the group’s supporters. She tweeted: ‘This shows just how ridiculous and sideways things are going in our LGBT community.’ Playwright Andrew Doyle said: ‘The pride movement no longer supports gay people.’ But a member of the public commenting in support of the trans activists wrote: ‘ They were removed because they went there specifically to spread hate about trans people.’ Gian Molinu, of Pride Cymru, said: ‘Despite a small group of people interrupting the march, they were drowned out by shouts of solidarity... there is no place for hate at Pride. And as our parade said today loudly and clearly, “trans rights are human rights”.’ A South Wales Police spokesman said: ‘Officers were required to engage with a small protest group who had assembled themselves on the route to block the procession. ‘To ensure no further disruption to the event, officers asked the group to move to an alternative location nearby which they agreed to do.’
Daily Mail, 29/8/22
Lesbians told to leave pride march amid transgender row Jonathan Ames - Legal Editor The police told a lesbian campaign group to leave a pride march after members clashed with transgender rights activists who opposed their views. Members of GetTheLOutUK had joined a march called Pride Cymru in Cardiff on Saturday, during which they displayed a banners reading “Lesbians don’t like penises” and “trans-activism erases lesbians”. The campaigners describe themselves as a “grassroots lesbian activist group” that stands against “queer politics and transgenderism”. A hallmark of its so-called “gendercritical” approach is that sex is biological and men cannot become women. The group has accused some transgender activists of being anti-feminist because of their view that lesbians who say they would not have sex with transgender women are bigots. Members of the group were asked to leave after one of them and a transgender rights activist shouted at each other. Organisers of the march have since claimed that the lesbian group was not registered to attend. South Wales police said that officers “were required to engage” with a group who had tried to block the procession. “Officers asked the group to move to an alternative location near by, which they agreed to do.”
The Times, 29/08/22
Police move lesbians on at Pride march after trans row The Daily Telegraph29 Aug 2022By James Moules PRIDE celebrations descended into a row after police removed a group of lesbians from a march during a “confrontation” with trans supporters. Footage on social media showed tensions at a rally in Cardiff as rival groups shouted at one another. Videos show members of Get The L Out UK, which calls itself a “grassroots lesbian feminist activist group”, being asked to leave by a police officer. Some women carried banners which said “transactivism erases lesbians” and “lesbians don’t like penises”. In the video, one woman is heard telling a police officer: “I want to make sure that I understand that you’re removing lesbians from an LGBT march.” The officer responds: “Yes, that is what’s happening. For your safety. For other people’s safety. That’s why.” Get The L Out UK later claimed police “failed” to protect them on Saturday. But Pride Cymru, which organised the main event, said the group was not a registered part of the march. They said: “Despite a small group interrupting the march, they were drowned out by the shouts of solidarity from the community and spectators. “There is no place for hate at Pride. And as our parade said today loudly and clearly: ‘Trans rights are human rights’.” It comes amid a debate around trans rights, with “gender critical” activists arguing that trans women should not be included in women’s spaces. Transgender people say this is discriminatory. South Wales Police said: “Officers engaged with a small protest group who had assembled to block the procession. “To ensure no further disruption to the event, officers asked the group to move to an alternative location nearby which they agreed to do. “Officers explained why they needed to move, provided guidance about protesting lawfully and offered to facilitate a lawful protest. The group was cooperative and left the area shortly after. “Contrary to some social media reports, nobody was arrested or forcibly moved.”
Daily Telegraph 29/08/22

Bindel, who has posed (more than once) in a newspaper with her mouth taped shut to indicate how she is silenced, was back with yet another full page article in the Daily Mail (on Thursday).

Why it's time to take the L out of LGBT Daily Mail1 Sep 2022By Julie Bindel Celebrating: Marchers at Pride Cymru LAST weekend, police removed a group of lesbians calling themselves ‘ Get The L Out’ from the Pride Cymru procession in Cardiff, claiming the women were causing a ‘confrontation’ with trans activists and supporters. In recent decades, we have become used to the idea that Pride marches are something we can all be part of to celebrate diversity. But this incident tells me, loud and clear, that for lesbians like me this is simply not true. We are no longer welcome; it is time for us to break from the ever-growing list of identities that make up the current acronym of LGBTQQI. Has the rainbow acronym expanded so far that it has become meaningless? In my view, the coalition of voices is now so deeply divided that it makes no sense to those of us who have been campaigning for lesbian and gay equality for years. Alongside a growing number of lesbians, I believe that we have, in recent decades, become ever more invisible and irrelevant. I have been told that my 40-plus years of campaigning for lesbian rights, and against all forms of discrimination towards women, is irrelevant because I have dared to speak out against the Stonewall transgender ideology that appears to have taken over almost the entire same-sex community. I have been labelled ‘ homophobic’, ‘bi-phobic’ and ‘transphobic’ for asking when lesbians will get any attention from the so-called LGBT organisations that purport to speak on my behalf. Get The L Out is a grassroots group founded to fight back. It was at Pride Cymru to protest at the invisibility and marginalisation of lesbians within the ever-expanding Pride umbrella. This now includes, it seems to me, more straight people than it does gay, what with male ‘ kinksters’ or those with a foot fetish, all of whom may, as modern proponents of the rainbow flag, identify as queer. Police accused the women of ‘causing confrontation’, to which one protester replied: ‘ We’re lesbians: it’s Cardiff Pride.’ They were making it clear to the police that, as lesbians, they have every right to be there. The demand for respect and inclusion need not be confrontational, but Get The L Out was making an important point: that Pride has been taken over by groups that seem to have a visceral dislike for lesbians. Yet it was they who were forced to leave — not the trans supporters shouting at them and grabbing their banners. Police claimed Get The L Out had not registered as a protest group for the march and therefore had no right to be there — but surely at Pride, of all places, those women should have the absolute right to speak out. They are talking about issues that have had a profound effect on young lesbians. What on earth has brought us to this? How is it that lesbians have been made to feel so unwelcome within what is supposedly our own community? And why have so many gay men joined the extreme trans-activists in turning against us so viciously? The truth is that this schism in the LGBT alliance is nothing new. I’ve been beaten up in gay clubs by fascists while gay men turn a blind eye, and then disbelieved by police when I reported it. I know of many women who have had the same experience. I was assaulted outside Edinburgh University, after I had delivered a speech on male violence, because I was deemed to be a bigot for not agreeing that ‘trans women are women’. I thought lesbians had come a long way since the 1970s, when neither we, nor gay men, were protected in law against discrimination. Back then, the very word ‘lesbian’ was considered repulsive, and I felt pressurised into using the term ‘gay’, to soften the blow. Neighbours on our housing estate told me I was a pervert and unsafe to babysit their children; they asked if something had happened in my childhood to make me ‘hate men’. After meeting feminists for the first time in 1979, when I was 17, I finally began to feel proud of my sexuality. We shared some social spaces with gay men because we weren’t wanted in mainstream society, but although we played nicely, what we had in common was always limited. After all, we were women and therefore faced sexism on top of other discrimination — often from gay men themselves. As we moved into the 1980s, in addition to Gay Pride parades, we began having Lesbian Strength marches for women only — named in recognition of the fact that it took a certain amount of courage and tenacity to be an out lesbian in those days. Stereotypes about being ‘butch’ led many women to reject the word ‘strength’, but we managed to overturn those stereotypes to some extent. Lesbians are often severely punished for rejecting men sexually, and in my experience face far more pressure to do the conventional thing and marry a man. Gay men, meanwhile, now have more freedom to live their lives, and these days are, I believe, far more celebrated within society and popular culture than lesbians. Of course, when the AIDS epidemic hit in the mid-1980s it brought terrible prejudice, bigotry and violence towards homosexual men. Many lesbians directly supported gay men through this terrible time. Section 28 (the homophobic legislation that forbade schools from ‘promoting homosexuality’) was introduced by the Thatcher government in 1988. This was the very first time that lesbians and gay men had been targeted together by legislation, and we joined forces. But for many lesbians, it was an unhappy alliance. Thus cemented together, we became ‘ lesbian and gay’, then LGB to include bisexual; and thereafter, the initial letters of other groups having nothing whatsoever to do with same-sex attraction (such as transgender, asexual and aromantic) have simply been added on. The current tongue-twisting acronym, at its most expansive, is LGBTQQIAAPPO2S. As my friend Simon Fanshawe pointed out, this looks more like an unbreakable Wi-Fi code. Whereas lesbians and gay men share being vilified for same- sex attraction, others represented by these letters do not necessarily have anything in common with us at all. And no one has the right, whether they represent the G, T, or Q, to tell lesbians what to do. Today, the word ‘lesbian’ has become stigmatised afresh. Young lesbians seem to be under pressure to call themselves queer or non-binary, or become trans men. And we are under pressure not only to accept the idea that male-bodied trans women are lesbians, but also to accept them as sexual partners. Stonewall’s CEO Nancy Kelley has branded the notion of lesbians rejecting trans women as ‘analogous to issues like sexual racism’. As someone who grew up being told that all I needed was a ‘good man’ to ‘cure me’ of my sexual perversion, this does not sit well with me. It is staggering to me that lesbians can be told we are bigoted, fascist, and discriminatory when we dare complain that male-bodied trans women who identify as lesbians do not belong in our groups — or our dating pool. The Get The L Out women are, in my view, valiantly standing up for the right of lesbians to be allowed to define what it means to be same- sex (as opposed to ‘same-gender’) attracted. The good news is that Lesbian Strength, which had fizzled out by the 1990s, is back, and will march in Leeds later this month. I, for one, will be there. It is high time we focused on our own needs and community — and recognised that we are no longer welcome at Pride. We’ve fought long and hard for lesbians to be accepted within mainstream society, and we will not be pushed back in the closet. Many gay men have viciously turned against us Lesbians are labelled bigoted and fascist
Julie Bindel being silenced with a full page article in the Daily Mail, 01/09/22
Just one of the many times Julie Bindel has put tape over her own mouth for an article in a national newspaper to show how she is being silenced. This one was in the Guardian some time ago
Just one of the many times Julie Bindel has put tape over her own mouth for an article in a national newspaper to show how she is being silenced. This one was in the Guardian in September 2021.

You might also be interested to read this piece on how the BBC altered their article on Pride Cymru multiple times, including to add a link to a GC group, something the BBC never does for any other group.

Tuesday and Wednesday saw no articles on trans people in the Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph or The Times.

Thursday, we had the above page from the Silenced Bindel in the Daily Mail while the Telegraph got the ball rolling on hating trans snooker players:

Trans snooker champion faces rack and ruin as rival calls for ban The Daily Telegraph1 Sep 2022By Hector Nunns Jamie Hunter, 25, from Widnes, Cheshire, says she will not stop playing the game she loves despite receiving a torrent of abuse SNOOKER has become the latest sport to be engulfed by a transgender row as a British player faces calls to be banned from the women’s game following her debut title win. Jamie Hunter from Widnes, Cheshire, became the first transgender player to win a ranking tournament on the women’s circuit last weekend with a 4-1 victory over Rebecca Kenna in Seattle. But the win in the US Women’s Open has exposed Hunter, 25, to a torrent of abuse, and now Maria Catalano, former world No1 and a cousin of Ronnie O’sullivan, the reigning world champion snooker player, wants her banned from the game. “I would say 90 per cent of the players on the women’s tour don’t agree with this,” Catalano said. “I don’t believe that women can compete against men on a level playing field in sport. We are wired differently, we think differently. And I do believe 100 per cent there is an advantage there even in snooker after transition. “There is a reason why they started a women’s tour. Reanne Evans is the best woman player I have seen and even she can’t crack it against the men. “If this is allowed to happen I will have to stop playing, which would break my heart. It is just not fair, biological women are being shut down by being told it is only a hate thing. And it isn’t. “This is going to sound extreme and won’t happen – but with the current rules, what would happen if Ronnie or Mark Selby [the world No3] decided to transition tomorrow? They would obviously wipe the floor with the existing women players. Would that be right?” Hunter responded by saying: “If Maria is upset, it is disheartening and saddening, but I’m there to help grow [the sport] not ruin it. I want the tour to prosper.” Athletic women’s sports have faced similar issues over the last year, with some banning trans athletes from female competitions and other governing bodies reviewing their policies. Snooker uses the International Olympic Committee’s testosterone guideline to test players. Hunter added: “Now I have won an event, a lot more people seem to have a problem. They weren’t bothered when I was making up the numbers, but now I’m challenging it’s changed.” She also said she has been “taken aback” by the abuse directed at her after wining the tournament on Sunday. “At the same time, it’s not going to stop me playing. I have dreams, I won’t let some nasty people stop me do what I love doing,” she said.
Daily Telegraph 01/09/22
On Friday, the Daily Mail eagerly platformed David Starkey, who they say has been cancelled because of his racist views. He’s now taking on the ‘notoriously prickly trans lobby’ which isn’t even a thing, except in the minds of transphobes.

Isn’t amazing how often those with racist views often turn out to be transphobic, too, eh?

‘Cancelled’ Starkey unrepentant as he takes on trans lobby Daily Mail2 Sep 2022 UH- OH, Dr David Starkey is whipping up a storm again — and this time he’s taking on the notoriously prickly trans lobby. The television historian, who was ‘cancelled’ after making racist remarks in 2020, has now publicly questioned the right of transgender women to identify themselves as female. ‘One of the terrible problems of the age that we live in is the refusal to confront the truth,’ declares the Tudors expert. ‘The whole world of so much of the social media, the whole world of critical race theory, and the whole world of transsexuality is a gigantic lie.’ He explains: ‘It’s an act of faith — it’s preposterous the idea that a man can become a woman. ‘These are simple absurdities. ‘And large parts of the population — the young population, those who, one would hope, are more questing, are most disillusioned with fiction — swallow fiction.’ Speaking on LBC’s Iain Dale All Talk podcast, Dr Starkey (pictured) adds: ‘We don’t need a new Jesus Christ; we need a teller of blunt, cruel truth. Well, perhaps that was Jesus. If you read the Bible, the Bible was brutal.’ Dr Starkey, 76, apologised after his incendiary remarks about slavery. He was dropped by his long-standing publisher, HarperCollins, and his literary agency, Rogers Coleridge & White, as well as losing top academic posts after he claimed that slavery did not constitute genocide. Last year, however, he shocked diners in London’s Soho by saying he stood by his original offensive comments. ‘I don’t regret that statement,’ he said at the London Grill Club. ‘I regret how I said it, and the fact that I gave a handle to my enemies, which is a stupid thing to do. ‘I regret stupidity, I don’t regret a moral position.’
Daily Mail, Richard Eden page, 2/9/22

They also had a go at the snooker story:

Join the cue! Now snooker is hit by trans row Daily Mail2 Sep 2022By Andy Jehring SNOOKER is the latest sport to become embroiled in a transgender row after a British player won her first title after transitioning. Jamie Hunter, 25, beat Rebecca Kenna in the final of the US Women’s Open on Sunday, sparking a furious debate in the sport. It is the first time a transgender player has won a ranking tournament on the women’s circuit, prompting outrage among female competitors. Former world No 1 Maria Catalano – a cousin of world champion Ronnie O’Sullivan – called for Hunter to be banned from the women’s game. ‘I would say 90 per cent of the players on the women’s tour don’t agree with this,’ she told The Daily Telegraph. ‘I don’t believe women can compete against men on a level playing field in sport.’ Hunter said: ‘I never played competitive snooker as a man in the amateurs. ‘I have only taken it seriously for the last 12 months, and I have been a woman for nearly three years.’
Daily Mail 02/09/22

The Times also picked up the snooker story, and, like the others, decided that trans women playing the game is unfair to cis women.

This latest cause was eagerly taken up by GCs online, who set about showing off their feminist credentials by telling us, once again, how women are rubbish at everything when compared to men.

In this case, your ability to judge angles and hit a ball with a stick is determined by your genital configuration.

Trans snooker player’s win cues up fairness row Kieran Gair Jamie Hunter: “Now I’ve won an event, more people seem to have a problem” A transgender snooker player’s victory in a women’s competition has triggered fresh debate about fairness in sport. Jamie Hunter, 25, became the first transgender woman to win a women’s ranking tournament by beating Rebecca Kenna 4-1 at the US Women’s Open in Seattle on Sunday. Some of her competitors argued that male-to-female transgender players had an unfair advantage and should be barred from female tournaments. Maria Catalano, ranked seventh by the World Women’s Snooker organisation and a cousin of Ronnie O’Sullivan, the world champion, said Hunter should be banned. Catalano said: “I don’t believe that women can compete against men on a level playing field in sport. We are wired differently, we think differently. And I do believe 100 per cent there is an advantage there even in snooker after transition. “There is a reason why they started a women’s tour. Reanne Evans is the best woman player I have seen and even she can’t crack it against the men. If this is allowed to happen I will have to stop playing, which would break my heart,” she told The Daily Telegraph. Hunter, 25, from Wigan, responded: “If Maria is upset, it is disheartening and saddening but I’m there to help grow [the sport] not ruin it. I want the tour to prosper. Now I have won an event, a lot more people seem to have a problem. They weren’t bothered when I was making up the numbers.” Jason Ferguson, chairman of the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association, defended Hunter’s right to compete on the women’s tour, saying it was up to individual sports to make decisions, adding that snooker was not as physical as other sports. He said: “I understand it more in, for example, rugby . . . [In] physical strength sports . . . you have to be very careful in a safety sense.” In snooker, the professional tour is open to men and women and there is no bar to women entering top tier tournaments if they are high enough in the rankings. However, only one woman has to date competed on the tour for a full year. While women-only tournaments do exist, they are designed to promote female participation in the sport. Hunter’s victory means that she will climb to a career-high of number six in the world when the latest rankings are published next week. The debate over whether trans competitors should be allowed in women’s sport has divided governing bodies and led to infighting among elite athletes. A string of sports have become engulfed in rows over gender in recent years, with British Cycling suspending a policy in April that had allowed trans women to race in the female category.
The Times 02/09/22
Saturday saw nothing again in the Daily Mail but The Telegraph told us how Jacob Rees-Mogg, the human Victorian pencil, will ‘scrutinise practice that sees funds put at service of ‘divisive dangerous agendas’

Taxpayer cash channelled under radar to trans charities Rees-mogg to scrutinise practice that sees funds put at service of ‘divisive, dangerous agendas’ The Daily Telegraph3 Sep 2022By Gordon Rayner and Robert Mendick TRANS activist charities that promote “dangerous” agendas are receiving taxpayers’ money because of a loophole that ministers have vowed to close. Controversial groups such as Mermaids and Gendered Intelligence are being funded by other charities that receive government funding because of a lack of oversight in Whitehall. The transfer of public money from one charity to another means that millions of pounds are being given to bodies of which the Government disapproves. Taxpayers’ money is also being handed to groups that oppose government policies such as the Rwanda deal for processing migrants. Jacob Rees-mogg, the minister for Brexit opportunities and government efficiency, has pledged to set up a ministerial oversight board to make sure public money no longer “disappears” into such organisations. Mr Rees-mogg wants to impose new rules on government-aided charities so that all secondary grants to other organisations must be scrutinised in advance. In extreme cases, the Government could demand money is repaid by charities if deemed to have been misspent. One of the cases that is understood to have prompted the move involved Sport England, which receives government grants and National Lottery money. It paid more than £140,000 to Gendered Intelligence for transgender inclusion training over two years. Gendered Intelligence has courted controversy by going into schools to give seminars on changing gender to children as young as four. The charity exists to “increase understanding of gender diversity”, but parents’ groups have expressed concerns that young children will become confused and could misinterpret feelings of unhappiness as a symptom of being the “wrong” gender. Neither Gendered Intelligence nor Sport England responded to requests for comment. Mermaids, another transgender charity, received £10,000 in 2019/20 from a fund administered by UK Youth, a charity that receives hundreds of thousands of pounds per year in government grants and lottery funding. Mermaids has been criticised over its campaigning for children to be allowed better access to puberty-blockers and other medical options. Mermaids declined to comment and UK Youth did not respond to requests for comment. The new board would be chaired by Mr Rees-mogg or his successor and would include ministers from the Treasury and grant-giving departments, such as the Home Office and Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. ‘It is an essential principle that there is democratic oversight of how government spends money’ Mr Rees-mogg said: “The grants ministerial oversight board is designed to ensure that taxpayers’ money cannot disappear into organisations that push divisive and dangerous agendas. It is an essential principle that there is democratic oversight of how government spends money.” Other groups have received direct government funding despite trying to stand in the way of government policy. Migrant Help, which wrote to the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary urging them to drop its “unthinkably cruel” policy to send illegal migrants to Rwanda, receives around £4million per year in grants. Migrants Organise, which promoted a protest outside the Home Office against the Rwanda policy, has received more than £10,000 in government grants, and the law firm Instalaw, which challenged the legality of the policy in court, received £2,000 for an apprenticeship scheme.
Daily Telegraph 3/9/22

It is worth noting that the following stories received absolute no coverage in the mainstream press:

Trans stories to watch out for

 

RFU issued with trans legal challenge
Sunday Telegraph (Sport) 4/9/22
  • A pond which is known for being all-female and has welcomed trans people for forever is now the subject of a protest because Maya Forstater noticed India Willoughby enjoyed a nice afternoon there:

Trans activists close feminist society at university Campaigners accused of abusing leader of women’s group and frightening members into quitting The Sunday Telegraph4 Sep 2022By Ewan Somerville A UNIVERSITY’S feminist society has been “purged by trans activists”, with its email accounts shut down and members quitting for their own safety. Dozens of students attended meetings of Swansea University’s womenonly Feminist Society, advertised as a “space away from men” to discuss issues such as a surge of spiking incidents in the city. But campus activists alleged it was transphobic and demanded the expulsion of its leader after it publicly supported Kathleen Stock, the professor bullied for her trans views at Sussex University, and promoted a book by Helen Joyce, the feminist writer. Their “frenzied” backlash included sharing its leader’s personal social media accounts online and friends of the society’s members vowing to never speak to them again, it said. Activists wrote insults, such as “shut up Terf ” – a slur for trans exclusionary radical feminist – and “freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences you dumb f---s”, on its its Instagram account. Swansea University Students’ Union launched a transphobia investigation and sent emails, seen by The Sunday Telegraph, demanding an “urgent meeting” over social media posts. Nine months on, the investigation is “ongoing”, but during the summer holidays the society’s email account was quietly deleted and its profile page removed from the union’s website. Campaigners said the episode is a cautionary tale of the “national scandal” of campus feminists being censured if they view trans women as different from biological women. Abby Claron, 23, the outgoing president of the society, said: “We have been purged by trans activists [for] openly supporting women’s sex based-rights and sex-based spaces.” The recent philosophy graduate added: “We’re not sure how there can be an ‘investigation’ that lasts the entire academic year, but never once involved us. My committee members were frightened into quitting, with one telling me that her friends would no longer speak to her if she remained in the society. The university vice-chancellor also ignored all letters of support sent to us by women’s rights groups.” The society had selected its committee for the 2022-23 academic year when it was told in July that it must “re-conduct” the election on a date chosen by the students’ union. However, without disclosing the results, the union claimed the election had “failed” due to “timing” that it had set, Ms Claron said, so the society is in limbo. “Frankly, I find their behaviour appalling. What has happened to us is concerning for freedom of speech more generally, and the academic climate of Swansea University,” she added. “They have completely removed us ‘The gradual erasure of feminist societies in Britain’s universities is a national scandal’ from everything under the convenient guise that our election has ‘failed’, despite other ‘defunct’ societies still showing on the SU’s website. “The committee next year is concerned about the consequences they will face if they try to continue. ” Toby Young, the general secretary of the Free Speech Union, said: “The gradual erasure of feminist societies in Britain’s universities is a national scandal and is a perfect illustration of why the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill, which will hold universities to account, is so urgently needed. I hope Liz Truss will push it to the top of her priority list.” A spokesman for Swansea University Student Union said: “The complaint refers to … transphobia allegations made against some individuals within the Feminist Society. This investigation is ongoing.” AND Ladies’ pond is for biological women only, campaign says The Sunday Telegraph4 Sep 2022By Ewan Somerville TRANS women must stop bathing in Hampstead Heath ladies’ pond before its centenary anniversary in 2025, campaigners have demanded. A debate has erupted over the gender identity policy introduced by town hall bosses three years ago for the beauty spot in north London. The Kenwood Ladies’ Pond was opened in 1925 and is billed as a “unique women-only space” that “provides a place of refuge and security for women and girls of all ages”. But in 2019, the City of London Corporation, the local authority that manages it, allowed anyone who identifies as a woman to enter the water and changing rooms to be “fully compliant with the Equality Act 2010”, which protects both sex and gender reassignment. Now, campaigners are trying to overturn the policy, with 150 women protesting in the park to “let women swim”. Venice Allan, who organised the protest last Saturday, said: “Women came together to reclaim our beloved ladies’ pond on Hampstead Heath in time for the centenary in 2025. Plans are already being made for future actions. Did they really think they would get away with colonising our most special place?” During the protest, women surrounded the pond holding placards, before gathering at the Stone of Free Speech on Parliament Hill. Some Muslim and Orthodox Jewish women told the crowd they felt they could no longer use the ladies’ pond. Maya Forstater, of the campaign group Sex Matters, accused council bosses of “not listening to women who want single-sex privacy” and vowed to return the site to a “female-only oasis” by 2025. The Kenwood Ladies’ Pond Association, which was not involved with the protest, said its “primary concern is preserving the pond’s special atmosphere, which is joyful, welcoming and peaceful”. A spokesman for the City of London Corporation said: “Our gender identity policy ensures our public services do not discriminate against trans people. “We welcome a wide range of service users and we want to ensure they all feel comfortable accessing and enjoying the bathing ponds and facilities.”
Sunday Telegraph 4/9/22
Apologies for anything I might have missed in the papers this week, it was the busiest week of my working year for the job that pays my bills, so I was both distracted by that and exhausted after it.

Previous roundups:

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