A Week in the War on Women: Monday 24th August - Sunday 30th August
By JL
Monday 24th August - This Never Happens
A women’s rights campaigner believes that a trans-identified male housed in a female prison has been charged with sexual assault.
Women are Human writer, Karen Finlay, spoke to Canadian women’s rights advocate, Heather Mason about a federal prisoner called Steve Mehlenbacher.
Mehlenbacher is serving a sentence for a total of 16 bank robberies. Back in 2013 he featured in an article about a dating website called Canadian Inmates Connect Inc in which he bragged about the number of women willing to pay him ‘conjugal visits’.
Now claiming to ‘identify as a woman’, he is known as Sam and is serving his sentence in the female estate at Grand Valley Institution (GVI) in Ontario.
A former prisoner known as Mary has first-hand experience of Mehlenbacher’s predatory behaviour as she served time in the same institution. She describes how he tried to corner her in the prison laundry and says he bragged to other inmates about his sexual conquests while incarcerated.
A fellow inmate revealed to Heather Mason that Mehlenbacher has recently been charged with sexually assaulting a female prisoner in the Grand Valley Institution.
Tuesday 25th August - The Witch Burning Continues
Julie Bindel wrote about “Yet another feminist burned at the stake”, Sasha White.
Sasha White was an assistant agent at the Tobias Literary Agency in New York until she got sacked for being a feminist on social media. She had expressed gender-critical views, such as commenting that JK Rowling’s essay is ‘nuanced and insightful’, from her personal Twitter account.
It didn’t take long for the Witchfinders to find and bully her with the usual accusations of bigotry and demands of her employer to fire her.
White’s employers at the Tobias Literary Agency, obliged the baying mob by sacking her immediately. Not only that, “in honour of the trans community”, they made donations to a trans group which funds sex reassignment surgery and offered their review services free of charge to trans authors.
The agency’s website lists three people on the ‘team’ at Tobias. Unsurprisingly, the two most senior members of that ‘team’ are men.
In 2018 Tobias literary agent, Matt Belford, was on Twitter expressing his enthusiasm for Pornhub, a site which is frequently accused of profiting from and depicting the abuse and rape of women and underage girls.
A website on which women and girls are exploited and abused is fine, but feminists expressing opinions must be sacked.
As Julie Bindel states, “The trans-lobby demand total capitulation from women so that we are not even allowed to question the ‘trans women are women’ mantra. It is about who gets to speak, and who is silenced. Right now, feminists are the casualties”.
Wednesday 26th August - Standing Up for the Equality Act 2010
For years the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) and the Government Equalities Office (GEO) have been misrepresenting the Equalities Act 2010, specifically the legislation regarding single-sex exemptions and spaces.
Official sources are providing inaccurate guidance and, as a consequence, many businesses and organisations are in breach of the act where the sex-based rights of women and girls are being compromised.
Ann Sinnott, a former Cambridge City Councillor, set up the Authentic Equity Alliance (AEA) to promote the interests of women and girls.
The AEA is now seeking to clarify the terms of the Equality Act 2010 by taking legal action against the EHRC and the GEO. Both have received pre-action protocol letters and if they do not respond within 14 days or if choose to fight the legal challenge, the AEA will apply for permission to take the case to Judicial Review.
We’ll keep you posted. Meanwhile, if you would like to contribute to the AEA crowdfunder, you can do so here.
Thursday 27th August - The Wound That Never Heals
NATIONAL POST: Yaniv has filed a second lawsuit against three female beauticians.
It seems that bullying women is a full-time job for serial grifter, harasser of teenage girls and menstruation fetishist, Jonathan “Jessica” Yaniv.
Yaniv was in the news last year after he pursued legal action against five home-based beauticians, mostly immigrant women of colour on low incomes, because they refused to give him a Brazilian wax. That’s right, he tried to sue vulnerable women because they did not want to handle his male genitalia.
His complaints were dismissed and his testimony described as “disingenuous and self-serving” by a member of the tribunal. He was ordered to pay $2000 dollars for ‘improper conduct’ to three of the women against whom he’d brought the action.
Yaniv is now taking legal action against those same three women for $11,800. Details are scant but documents published to the British Columbia Court Services website on 26th August show that Yaniv has filed a civil suit against the women in question.
And yet Yaniv is not the problem, Canada is the problem. Under that country’s Self-ID laws, Yaniv might win.
Friday 28th August - Just When We Thought We Couldn’t Love Her Any More
BBC NEWS: JK Rowling has returned the Robert F Kennedy Human Rights Ripple of Hope Award.
JK Rowling won the Ripple of Hope award last year. Earlier this month Kerry Kennedy, RFKHR president, made comments about the author on the organisation’s website.
Kennedy made a statement that JK Rowling’s views, “create a narrative that diminishes the identity of trans and non-binary people”. She then went on to claim that “The science is clear and conclusive: sex is not binary” (editor’s note: scientists have not, as yet, discovered a third sex).
As proof of this ‘clear and conclusive’ science, she linked to a New York Times opinion piece which talks mostly about intersex (disorders of sex development or DSD) conditions. Perhaps Kennedy isn’t aware how frequently people with DSDs object to having their medical condition erroneously aligned with trans issues?
JK Rowling responded with her own statement.
“I believe the time is coming,” said Rowling, “When those organisations and individuals who have uncritically embraced fashionable dogma, and demonised those urging caution, will have to answer for the harm they’ve enabled.”
Saturday 29th August - Just When We Thought They Couldn’t Stoop Any Lower
In response to JK Rowling’s reliably measured and compassionate words, morally barren ‘charity’ Mermaids, issued a statement accusing her of causing trans suicides.
This wholly unsubstantiated claim is not only libellous and unethical, but it is in breach of the Samaritans’ guidelines on the reporting of youth suicide.
“Young people are more susceptible to suicide contagion for a range of different reasons… Sensational and excessive reporting has been shown to increase the likelihood of imitational suicidal behaviour among vulnerable people, including young people.”
Mermaids are already known for weaponising suicide. Their “better a live daughter than a gay son” threat is used to scare parents into signing off on affirmation and puberty blockers. However, their claims regarding trans child suicide are as dubious as their ever-changing advice on what the word ‘trans’ even means.
If you think this irresponsible behaviour warrants a complaint to the Charities Commission, here’s the link. And you can sign this petition calling on mental health charities to condemn Mermaids’ actions.
Sunday 30th August - Scottish Ministers Are Redefining Womanhood
THE SUNDAY TIMES: Feminist campaigners are taking legal action against the Scottish government over legislation which erases the meaning of the word “Woman”.
In March 2018 the Scottish Government introduced the Gender Representation on Public Boards Act (GRPBA) to remedy the historical under-representation of women taking roles in public life. All very laudable. However, the GRPBA Statutory Guidance redefines the word ‘woman’ to include males; the category of woman includes those who meet the following criteria:
Have the characteristic of gender reassignment, as defined in the Equality Act
Be proposing to undergo, is undergoing or undergone a process (or part of a process) for the purpose of reassigning their sex to female
Be living as a woman
According to the guidance, to be “living as a woman… would not require the person to dress, look or behave in any particular way”.
So a man could take up a role intended for a woman simply by calling himself Elizabeth.
For Women Scotland have instigated legal proceedings against the Scottish government and the group’s lawyers lodged a petition for judicial review. The Scottish government responded by stating that it is satisfied with the GRPBA and guidance published under it “Are within legislative and devolved competence”.
Trina Budge, a For Women Scotland spokeswoman, told the paper, “It is untenable that ‘woman’ is defined differently across the laws of Scotland… This case is vitally important to stop the erosion of women’s rights in law.”
See you next week.