A Week in the War on Women: Monday 28th November - Sunday 4th December
Monday 28th November - This Never Happens #1
THE TIMES SCOTLAND: A formerly trans-identified male sex offender is back in prison after using Amazon Echo to spy on a young woman and her toddler.
Aaron Herschell is a sex offender who lives in West Lothian, Scotland. In 2016 he was convicted of raping a 19-year-old woman and attempting to rape an 18-year-old woman. He was subsequently sentenced to two years detention.
A few weeks after his release in 2018 he breached the conditions of his licence. He repeated this offence in 2019 when he deleted Kik, a dating app notorious for its use by paedophiles, from his digital devices and erased all his chat records. Last year, then aged 24, Herschell breached his Risk of Sexual Harm Order for a third time, this time by socialising with children under the age of sixteen.
Earlier this month, Herschell admitted to using an Amazon Echo device to spy on his latest victim, a young woman he met using a false identity. Livingston Sheriff Court heard that Herschell had connected his device to that of the young woman who lives with her 20-month-old daughter.
Herschell then spied on the pair in their home for lengthy periods, bypassing the device’s security alerts to keep the line open. Furthermore, he used the Amazon Echo device to groom the woman’s little girl, singing to her, reading her bedtime stories and telling her that he was her new daddy.
Herschell admitted adopting a fake identity, using the device to spy on his victims and breaching his Sexual Offences Prevention Order. He was convicted of Acting in a Threatening or Abusive Manner and sentenced to three years and nine months imprisonment.
While awaiting his rape trial in 2016 Herschell claimed to be transgender, requested gender reassignment treatment and insisted that staff call him ‘Alexis’. He demanded that female officers conduct his ‘rub-downs’ and strip searches and women on the prison staff were forced to comply, despite their obvious concerns. Herschell subsequently abandoned his trans identity.
A predatory man who ‘identified’ as a woman for nefarious purposes. Something Nicola Sturgeon insists would never happen.
Also Today - Labour Losing Women
THE CRITIC: Kim Thomas reported on the harassment and bullying meted out to Labour Party women who dare to defend their sex-based rights.
Carol Angharad is a Labour Party activist and councillor in Belper, Derbyshire. When she tweeted in defence of women’s sex-based rights, the regional Labour Party reprimanded her and required her to write a letter of apology to the local Pride group. Carol is a long-time lesbian campaigner.
In November 2020, the national party informed her that she was in contravention of its social media policy and that a warning of expulsion would stay on her file for eighteen months. For three years she has suffered bullying and harassment, much of it done publicly via social media. Even though she and others have complained about these abusive and libellous posts, the regional Labour Party director deemed that they did not breach party policy.
Sue Lent, a former social worker and Greenham Common woman, has been a member of the Labour Party for over 40 years and a councillor in Cardiff for 25 years. In 2018 she had to appear before a Labour Party Wales disciplinary panel after sharing a newspaper article about the eradication of the word ‘woman’. Later that year she was reprimanded for using the phrase ‘male-bodied people’ in a Facebook post. Earlier this year she received a reprimand from the party’s national office for ‘conduct that was prejudicial and grossly detrimental to the Labour Party’ because she’d shared, without comment, an article suggesting that Caitlyn Jenner is an autogynephile. Sue has also suffered sustained online bullying from party members and been the subject of a witch hunt in the Welsh media.
Mandy Clare was a Labour councillor in Cheshire. When she was elected to the party’s National Women’s Committee, her attempts at meetings to raise women’s experience of being bullied were cut short and not minuted. When she signed the Labour Women’s Declaration, fellow committee members and members of her constituency party accused her of transphobia and attacked her on social media. Mandy asked the national party to investigate this intimidation but it refused.
Her local party removed her as a candidate for the ward she already represented and, after being shortlisted to stand for another ward, she was forced to appear before a panel to determine whether she could stand as a Labour councillor. She was told she had brought the party into disrepute and she was removed from the councillors’ selection list. She resigned from the party and now stands as an independent.
Karen Ingala-Smith has dedicated her life to fighting male violence against women and to supporting its victims. She is the CEO of Nia, an organisation which provides services for the women and children who have suffered sexual abuse and domestic violence. She runs Counting Dead Women and co-founded The Femicide Census, both vital sources of data about men’s fatal violence against women in the UK.
In early 2020 Karen applied to re-join the Labour Party. She received an email saying that her application had been rejected because, “Information brought to our attention is that you have engaged in conduct online that may reasonably be seen to demonstrate hostility based on gender identity.”
She appealed against the decision and submitted a subject access request. Eventually, three months later, she received an email with an attachment containing 14 of her past tweets. She was offered an opportunity to make a statement in response. She chose to make public her reply. "You win Labour. Good luck with the next general election – but I’m interested to see what you plan to do to end male supremacy and women’s sex-based oppression, especially if you can’t even count who is a woman."
Tuesday 29th November - Charity Says Women Must Wheesht
THE TIMES: A charity set up to challenge male violence against women and girls banned any mention of single sex spaces and the self ID bill at its event.
Zero Tolerance is a charity based in Scotland which works toward ending male violence against women and girls. This week the charity hosted a gathering to celebrate its 30th anniversary. The event was held in Edinburgh and featured Nicola Sturgeon as its lead speaker.
A communication sent to attendees prior to the event said that Zero Tolerance wished “To create a safe and supported environment for our guests and ask you to support us in this aim by refraining from discussions of the definition of a woman, and single sex spaces, in relation to the gender recognition act”.
The charity carried the same missive on its website.
On this same website Zero Tolerance claims that, “We always challenge men’s behaviour and shine the spotlight on over-arching systems of power and privilege that subordinate women and entitle men.”
Ironic, then, that women were silenced but Mridul ‘reframe your trauma’ Wadhwa was in attendance.
[The event was interrupted by one brave woman breaking the rules and challenging Sturgeon’s self ID bill. More on this in our Good News Supplement.]
Also Today - This Never Happens #2
BBC NEWS: A trans-identified male has been convicted of sexually abusing and impregnating a 14-year-old girl.
25-year-old David Orton, also known as Danielle Rose Gemini, is the father of three young children. He began abusing his friends’ daughter when she was thirteen years old. He often stayed as a guest at the family home and a source close to the case told The Daily Mail, “Orton used his identification as a woman to get close to his victim”. The family believed they could trust him with their child because of his trans identity.
Eventually, the girls’ parents became suspicious that Orton was abusing their daughter and alerted the police. Orton had done such a thorough job grooming the child that, initially, she could not accept that she had been abused. Finally, she found the courage to tell the authorities what Orton had subjected her to. Not only had he groomed and sexually abused her, but he had also made the girl pregnant.
During Orton’s trial, the investigating officer, Detective Constable Sarah Le Boutillier, told Leicestershire Crown Court, “Throughout our interviews, Orton refused to accept that there was any wrongdoing and claimed that they were in fact the victim”. She also commented, “Orton used the victim's vulnerability for their own gain and not only groomed the victim, but also her parents who believed Orton was a genuine friend”.
Orton was found guilty of two counts of penetrative sexual activity with a child and sentenced to nine-and-a-half years imprisonment. The judge told him, “You are a self-pitying and self-obsessed individual who shows no detectable empathy and not a shred of remorse for your actions”.
Leicestershire Police said that Orton ‘identified as a woman’ at the time of the offences but that they were not able to give ‘a current gender identity’ for him.
He groomed, sexually assaulted and impregnated an underage girl. Let’s stop pretending we don’t know what sex he is.
Wednesday 30th November - Not Very Independent Television
ITV Wales broadcast a documentary about and published an article by trans-identified male cyclist, Emily Bridges, this week.
Emily (formerly Zach) Bridges has been cycling competitively since his early teens.
In 2020, aged nineteen, Bridges began ‘identifying as a woman’ and started hormone treatment in 2021. He continued to compete in men’s events and, in February 2022, he competed on the men’s team at the University Championships. He won an individual gold medal in the men's points race and a bronze medal in the team pursuit event.
In March 2022 Bridges, who is six feet two inches tall, announced his intention to compete in female events. However, just before his first competition, cycling’s international governing body, the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI), ruled that Bridges was not eligible to race in the women’s division.
Free To Be Me is a documentary filmed over 18 months. ITV described it as, “The deeply personal story of elite Welsh trans cyclist Emily Bridges as she [sic] fights to represent her [sic] country in the female category for the first time at the Commonwealth Games.”
The documentary propagates total untruths about the science and study of transgender athletes and allows a number of outlandish claims go unchallenged. Bridges’ mother describes his physical transition as putting the engine of Fiat into a chassis of an Aston Martin. This would be laughable were it not so breathtakingly uninformed and misleading.
Bridges himself states, “I’m aware I have different traits and attributes to other female riders but they’re not so wildly different that it makes competition unfair”. He then goes on to assert, “Reduction of testosterone creates a fair playing field”, a claim proven to be entirely false.
The programme never mentions the unequivocal evidence that trans-identified males retain numerous physical advantages even long after transition. Instead it focuses on the supposed unfairness of Bridges being excluded from female cycling. “It’s ripped away what I love the most”, he says. “The dream of representing Wales is such a big deal for me and for that not to be a reality anymore, that’s so disappointing”.
Bridges can represent Wales. In the male category.
The day after this documentary aired, ITV Wales then published an article written by Bridges which features the same inaccuracies and untruths as its documentary. “I haven’t got any unfair advantage”, says Bridges. “I’m not going to dominate women's sports anytime soon”.
This is hardly supported by the evidence.
Bridges’ article attempts to blackmail and gaslight those not swallowing his rhetoric. He associates the discussion around trans athletes with the Colorado Springs massacre, claiming that the shooting of five people is, “Directly related to dehumanisation and demonisation of trans people in the media, online, and in debates such as those about sports”. (Looks like Bridges is another trans activist choosing to ignore that the suspect in the Colorado Springs shooting identifies as non-binary and uses they/them pronouns.)
Bridges also addresses, as he puts it, “Fellow female athletes”, and claims to understand their concerns over fairness. However, he then tells them, “I am not a man, and I hope this documentary shows that trans women and cis women have so many similarities, be they hormonal, physical and in a sporting context, or in the way we face the same fights for much of our existence, and experience sexism in similar ways”.
As Joan Smith writes in Unheard, “Trans activists have created a climate where the fear of being labelled ‘transphobic’ inhibits honest responses. Bridges’s interview is an egregious example… You have to admire the cheek: what other group is allowed to invade other people’s categories, police their language, and still represent themselves as helpless victims?”
(You can contact ITV’s complaints department with this link.)
Also Today - I Can’t Believe It’s Not Satire
THE SPECTATOR: Jamie Wallis MP has been appointed to the Women and Equalities select committee.
Shortly after Wallis’ election in 2020, concerns surfaced over his business dealings and he resigned directorship of at least seven different companies. It transpired that over 800 complaints were made to trading standards about a group of companies that Wallis ran and that they had been the subject of 20 enforcement visits.
Wallis was listed at Companies House as the owner of a Thailand outsourcing company that paid staff the equivalent of £2.49 per hour, offered higher salaries for ‘native English speakers’ and advertised certain positions for ‘female-only’ applicants. Wallis was also linked to an ‘exploitative and demeaning’ business called Sugar Daddy which offered to introduce impoverished students to wealthy ‘sponsors’.
In November 2021 Wallis crashed his Mercedes into a telegraph pole and, by his own admission, he fled the scene. He was arrested and eventually convicted of failing to stop, failing to report a road traffic collision and leaving a vehicle in a dangerous position. He was banned from driving for six months and fined £2,500.
A few months after his car crash Wallis ‘came out’ as transgender though said he would continue to ‘present as male’ and use he/him pronouns. It was subsequently revealed that, at the time of his car crash, he was witnessed wearing a tight PVC miniskirt, tights and high heeled shoes.
And now he has a role on the Women and Equalities select committee.
Also Today - “Stunning & Brave”
The head of Channel 4 says ‘it was lovely’ that a trans-identified male revealed and handled his own penis live on national television.
You will remember that trans-identified male, Jordan Gray, appeared in the one-off special episode of Friday Night Live on Channel 4 in October. He began by singing a self-penned song with hugely misogynistic lyrics. (“I’m just better than you… I’m an amusing little mystery in your husband’s Google history. My tits will never sink and I’m guaranteed to squirt and I do anal by default…”) He then stripped off his clothes to reveal his male genitalia, took his penis in his hand and tried to play the keyboard with it.
Alex Mahon, Channel 4’s CEO, deems this “Perfectly, perfectly appropriate to put on television”.
Speaking to broadcaster, Sophie Morgan, this week, Mahon described Gray’s appearance on Channel 4 as ‘lovely’. She said it was the first time a ‘trans body’ had been seen on television and described it as “A beautiful moment of trans expression”.
Thursday 1st December - The Crucible On Campus
THE TIMES: An Oxford student union official faced a backlash after objecting to the abolition of the women’s officer role and has been forced to apologise.
The University of Oxford student union is replacing its women’s officer with a ‘liberation and equalities representative’. From next year, female students will no longer have a dedicated women’s rep.
Ellie Greaves, the union’s current vice-president for women, objected to the erasure of the post. She told student publication, Cherwell, “I think there’s a risk that the removal of [the post] will send the message that ‘sexism is solved’, when it really isn’t… We’re not where we need to be in terms of women’s representation and I think there’s a risk of moves to tackle sexual violence being left behind. There’s a reason the role has been around for so long”. She added, “I will continue to prioritise women as I’m in Oxford.”
Obviously, such heresy couldn’t go unpunished and Greaves faced a massive backlash from campus trans activists. She was subjected to an inquisition at a Student Council meeting on 23rd November and asked, “What do you have to say to the hundreds of students who were consulted regarding [the role]… who agreed that this would be a good change for inclusivity, equality and the priority of intersectionality?”
Greaves was forced to issue a grovelling apology and, in supplication, promised to submit herself for re-education. She issued a statement saying:
“The comments I made in the article contribute to a bio-essentialist, narrow-minded narrative of what being a woman is, including the prioritisation of women over minorities. I cannot apologise enough for the damage and hurt I have caused the trans community… My knowledge of the trans experience is very limited at the moment, and I will endeavour to educate myself further on trans inclusivity through more open engagement with LGBTQ+ Campaign and personal research”.
Under his eye.
Also Today - Witch Burning In Brazil
REDUXX: A female business owner has been charged with criminal transphobia after refusing a trans-identified male membership of her female only gym.
Jhenyfer Marine is a trans-identified male prostitute from Anápolis, Brazil.
He began ‘identifying as a woman’ four years ago and can be ambiguous about his physicality on social media, both claiming to have a vagina and stating that he does not want to change his ‘primary characteristics’. However, it is clear from photographs and videos he posts on social media that he has a penis.
In September Marine tried to join Espaço Fernanda Fitness, a female-only gym in his local neighbourhood. In an interview with publication, Universa, he said that he would be ‘more comfortable’ in a women-only establishment. The gym’s owner, Fernanda Caetano, told Marine that she could not accept his membership request as the gym is women-only.
Marine then filed a report against Fernanda Caetano with a division of the Brazilian police which deals with ‘intolerance’. He also sought the assistance of lawyer, Alex Costa, who is the president of the Anápolis Commission on Sexual and Gender Diversity.
Fernanda Caetano was then charged with criminal transphobia under a ‘social racism’ law. She was indicted under 2019 legislation which conflates LGBTQ+ people with people of colour. It means that Caetano’s so-called offence of excluding a trans-identified male from a female-only space falls under Brazil’s anti-racism laws.
Marine refused the Public Prosecutor’s Office proposition that Caetano pay him compensation of R$10,000 (about £1,600). He told local media that the payment was insufficient and that he believed he could make more money if the case is allowed to go to court.
If Fernanda Caetano is convicted under Brazil’s current ‘LGBT-phobia’ legislation, she could face up to 5 years imprisonment.
Men really can’t stand it when women say “No” to them, can they?
Friday 2nd December - This Never Happens #3
BIRMINGHAM MAIL: A man sexually assaulted a nine-year-old girl in a ‘gender neutral’ changing room at an aqua park.
27-year-old Edward Earnshaw sexually assaulted a nine-year-old girl in the communal changing room of Birmingham’s Waterworld aqua park. The girl had been swimming with her mum and a friend before going to the changing room cubicle to get dressed.
Earnshaw walked into the cubicle and assaulted the girl, asking, “What’s this?”. He was subsequently convicted of sexually assaulting a child aged under 13, sentenced to 30 months imprisonment and handed an indefinite Sexual Harm Prevention Order.
The girl’s mother told the court that this experience has had a devastating effect on her daughter. A once confident and outgoing child is now nervous, frightened of being alone and suffering with separation anxiety.
This is why women and girls need female-only spaces. ‘Gender neutral’ facilities are a gift to predators like Earnshaw.
Saturday 3rd December - This Never Happens #4
THE DAILY MAIL: According to official figures, almost 100 transgender prisoners have convictions for sexual offences.
Of the 230 trans-identified prisoners currently incarcerated in England and Wales, 97 are serving time for sexual offences. They include 44 who were imprisoned for rape, 14 who forced under-age children into sexual activity, eleven who were convicted of sexual assault and seven who were sent down for possessing or making child sexual abuse material.
Kenny MacAskill, the former Scottish justice secretary, obtained these figures in a Parliamentary answer. He commented, “These statistics show that the fears of women’s rights campaigners are right and governments north and south of the border are endangering vulnerable women… To house convicted male sex offenders with them is perverse and damaging to them. It shows the dangers of self-ID and the need to consider placing such prisoners in separate facilities”.
Sunday 4th December - The Beatings Will Continue
THE TELEGRAPH: Staff at Citizens Advice are being indoctrinated into gender identity dogma and have little choice but to go along with the ideology.
Citizens Advice is a nation charity which has received £290 million of taxpayer funded revenue over the last two years. Many people are currently reliant on its help to deal with financial hardship caused by the cost of living crisis.
However, the charity has been accused of having skewed priorities over its adherence to gender ideology and its preaching of pronouns. CEO, Dame Clare Moriarty, sent an email to all staff via the internal intranet, telling them that pronouns are “An important way of affirming their gender identity”, adding, “You can help to normalise sharing pronouns by sharing yours”.
Pronoun badges have been supplied for staff at both the national offices and for the regional teams. The IT department has drawn up instructions for the inclusion of pronouns in email signatures. In addition, staff have been directed to a four-page ‘pronouns resource’ which claims that pronouns are an extension of one’s name and includes Ze/Zir/Zirs or Ey/Em/Eirs as gender-neutral examples.
Staff are also being given extensive guidance on transitioning at work and, worryingly, being directed to Gendered Intelligence and even Mermaids for further information.
In another internal memo sent this year, staff were instructed, “As an organisation, we recognise that trans women are women, trans men are men and non-binary people are non-binary” and warned that, “We do not accept trans-exclusionary language or behaviour at work”. Of course, this has left gender-critical staff fearing reprisal for rejecting gender identity ideology.
Citizens Advice CEO, Dame Clare Moriarty, has a trans-identified daughter.
In this tweet from 2019 she seems to be celebrating the loss of female-only spaces at a government departing and applauding an account called ‘Spotted: unnecessarily gendered toilets’.
A Citizens Advice insider told The Telegraph that many staff are ‘deeply unhappy’ with the imposition of this ideological dogma. “The foundation of Citizens Advice is that we are independent and impartial - it’s what you learn at your first training session - but increasingly the organisation is promoting gender ideology as policy in a way that is neither. It feels as if there is pressure from the top for volunteers and staff to promote this ideology at all times: to add pronouns to your email, wear pronoun badges and the like. How is that impartial?”
See you next week.
What amazes me is that parents of trans people can be (not always, just the ones who like to shout about it) so selfish about the issue of intimate spaces. I know parents love their child but I was brought up to consider the feelings of others in my decision-making. I guess I'm old-fashioned. I have parents who would tell me not to encroach on the rights of others, not even if I really felt it necessary. These parents - again, not all - reek of entitlement.
The CAB relies on volunteers, as far as I’m aware, many of whom will be retired people (who have time to do much of the volunteer work that goes on in communities). My generation often have less tolerance for woke nonsense. This could present problems for the organisation if those people vote with their feet. I think the National Trust has faced a backlash from their volunteers for their wokeness so it could happen again at the CAB.