A Week in the War on Women: Monday 9th September - Sunday 15th September
Monday 9th September - Never Knowingly Under Sold Out
SCOTTISH DAILY EXPRESS: The John Lewis Partnership is prioritising trans-identified males over the dignity and safety of its female staff and customers.
Retail giant, the John Lewis Partnership (JLP), is the UK’s largest employee-owned business. In February we reported that it was forcing gender identity ideology onto its 70,000 employees in an internal LGBTQ+ staff magazine called Identity. The publication promoted the social transition of children, the use of breast-binders and advice from Mermaids. Helen Joyce described it as, “Packed with hyperbole, scaremongering and ideologically driven content”.
This week, The Scottish Daily Express reported that the JLP’s ‘transgender policies’ risk the safety and dignity of female staff and customers. The retailer gives trans-identified male shoppers open access to women’s toilets, changing rooms and even bra fitting areas. Furthermore, trans-identified male employees are permitted to use female locker rooms and toilets.
Mary Howden, of the Women’s Rights Network (WRN) Scotland, told the paper that the John Lewis stores in Glasgow and Edinburgh were visited as part of a mystery shopper exercise. Staff, seemingly unaware of the Equality Act 2010 and the single sex exemptions it allows, told the mystery shoppers that they are legally required to make the fitting rooms mixed sex now (they aren’t) and have no choice in the matter.
Last week we published the resignation letter of Lesley Pickup, a former selling partner at the JLP’s Cheadle branch. Her correspondence spoke of “Married, male colleagues, with full male genitalia, not transitioning to female, who live as husbands at home but choose to dress as women at work, assuming female names, and expecting full access to toilettes and locker rooms which were previously female-only employee safe spaces. This regardless and without one moment of thought or consideration for any negative effects and consequences on their female colleagues. Female colleagues who I know to be triggered, caused anxiety and mental distress by these men’s presence in previously safe female spaces. Female colleagues who live in fear of dismissal if they speak out”.
A spokesman for John Lewis told the Scottish Daily Express, “Our approach follows best practices adopted by many other well-known businesses” and he denied ignoring the rights and safety of women. However, he had to concede that female employees may be expected to use disabled toilets if they object to sharing intimate spaces with trans-identified males. With regard to the trans inclusivity policies, he commented, “We engaged multiple groups, including Partners and our internal networks, to understand best practice and also took legal advice to ensure that we had considered a breadth of perspectives”.
Perhaps one of the partners the JLP consulted on its ‘trans inclusion’ policy was Brighton sales assistant, ‘Ruby’ Whitcombe, pictured below?
Early this year, John Lewis funded an exhibition in collaboration with LGBTQ+ arts organisation, Proud Studios. The IDENTITY Project - A Portrait of a Community, was “An exploration of what it means to identify as a member of the LGBTQIA+ community today” and featured work by photographer, Chris Jepson. The exhibition involved a specifically JLP Edition which, according to the publicity material, celebrated “The diversity within the John Lewis Partnership by capturing the portraits and stories of its LGBTQIA+ Partners”.
One of the photographs on display in this exhibition is of JLP supermarket assistant, ‘Ruby’ Whitcombe, who is described as ‘transgender’ because he ‘now presents as female full-time’ (ie he wears women’s clothing to work). You’ll notice that, in his portrait, ‘Ruby’ is clutching a multi-thonged leather whip.
‘Ruby’ whitcombe had a Flickr account to which he uploaded hundreds of photographs of himself. (The account was suddenly deleted after this story reached social media but the page has been archived.) In most of the images he uploaded, ‘Ruby’ is striking pornographic poses while wearing women’s lingerie and fetish gear.
According to the John Lewis ‘trans’ staff policy, ‘Ruby’ is entitled to use the women’s toilets and changing facilities. “All partners and others working for the partnership may choose the toilet or changing facility that is suitable for them.”
Furthermore, the policy’s definition of ‘transphobia’ suggests that any women protesting ‘Ruby’s’ presence in their spaces, ‘mis-gendering’ him or refusing to acknowledge his ‘gender identity’, will face disciplinary action.
John Lewis, “Working in Partnership for a Happier World”. Though not for women.
Tuesday 10th September - This Never Happens #1
THE DAILY MAIL: A trans-identified male already convicted of one murder and suspected of child abuse has confessed to killing a second victim.
We have reported previously on Alex Ray Scott. In January 2020 he was arrested for the brutal murder of a 64-year-old antique dealer, Kenneth Savinski. Scott met Savinski on a dating site and made arrangements to visit his home. Concerned friends discovered Savinski’s body when they called in to check on him. He had been stabbed in the face and his throat had been slit.
Scott, who is originally from Oklahoma, was already under investigation for child abuse at the time of his arrest for murder in New York. In September 2018 he was accused of sexually abusing a co-worker's five-year-old by forcing the child to perform oral sex. He fled his hometown in 2019 in order to escape the three charges of lewd molestation he was facing there. The New York Post reported that Scott was ‘hiding out’ in NYC after removing his GPS ankle monitor.
Following his arrest in January 2020, Scott began claiming a trans identity and said he was ‘transitioning’. When he later appeared at the Supreme Court, his lawyer referred to him with female pronouns.
After being questioned by police in New York over the violent death of Kenneth Savinski, Scott also became implicated in a separate murder, that of 63-year-old Robin Skocdopole in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. NYPD detectives found that Scott was in possession of credit cards and identification documents belonging to Skocdopole who had not been seen alive since April 2019.
During the subsequent investigation, certain of Skocdopole’s body parts were discovered in Broken Arrow and a medical examiner concluded that both a chainsaw and a manual saw had been used to sever them. Skocdopole’s head has still not been found. Because of Alex Ray Scott’s previous association with Skocdopole, he was suspected of killing him and the murder investigation was turned over to the FBI. In June 2023, Scott confessed to Skocdopole’s murder and, in May 2024, he was sentenced to 45 years in federal prison for second-degree murder.
Awaiting trial for the second degree murder of Kenneth Savinski, having originally pleaded not guilty, Scott remained in the custody of the New York City Department of Corrections (NYCDOC). He is currently being held at a women’s facility - the Rose M Singer Centre on Rikers Island - and his NYCDOC documentation now lists his ‘birth sex’ as ‘female’.
This week, Scott appeared at Manhattan Supreme Court, considerably altered in appearance, sporting long hair, fake breasts and very heavy make-up. He finally admitted to killing 64-year-old Kenneth Savinski using a decorative plate, kitchen knife and ‘maybe a pen’ in January 2020.
It is expected that Scott will be returned to court for formal sentencing at the end of the month. He will serve 22 years to life in prison for Savinski’s murder. If he is ever released, he will be transferred to Oklahoma to serve out his 45-year sentence for Skocdopole’s murder.
Wednesday 11th September - The Right Side of History?
REDUXX: Trans activists in Spain are demanding an automatic full pension and priority access to social housing for trans-identified seniors amid claims that trans people suffered more than any other group under the Franco regime.
A prominent Spanish trans activist organisation, Plataforma Trans (the Federation Platform for Trans Rights), has twice met with senior government officials to demand an automatic lifetime pension for all trans people upon them turning 65. This pension would be paid regardless of whether or not the recipient made any pension contributions throughout their life. The group is also demanding that trans-identified pensioners are granted priority access to public housing and housing assistance programs.
This proposed legislation, being referred to as the ‘Trans Memory Law’, is demanded amid jaw-dropping assertions over “The violence suffered by trans and gender-dissident people during the dictatorship and post-Franco regime.”
The president of Plataforma Trans, a trans-identified male named Mar Cambrollé, claims that “The Franco dictatorship and post-Francoism violated the most fundamental rights of trans and gender-diverse people, who not only suffered the worst effects of Franco and post-Francoism with deprivation of freedom, but also suffered [exile].”
General Francisco Franco, ‘Caudillo’, came to power in Spain immediately after the civil war and imposed on the country a terrifying dictatorship from 1939 until his death in November 1975. The Francoist regime was characterised by oppression and extreme violence with thousands of people, particularly political dissidents, being exiled, imprisoned, tortured or executed. An estimated 112,000 victims were killed and buried in mass unmarked graves.
With the regime’s adherence to militarism and ultra masculinity, women who lived under Franco had no rights or status, were legally incapacitated and subjugated by males, and confined to very narrow domestic roles. Dissenters suffered torture, sexual violence, public humiliation and execution. Gay and lesbian people, deemed a ‘social danger’, were cruelly persecuted throughout the Franco regime. Draconian laws against homosexuality were rigorously enforced and many were tortured, imprisoned, incarcerated in mental institutions and/or murdered.
For Mar Cambrollé to claim that trans people suffered the most under Franco’s regime would be offensive enough, but his conduct in recent years makes his engagement in oppression olympics even more appalling.
In the past, Cambrollé has attacked the Spanish feminist campaigners who defend women’s sex-based rights. In February 2021 even Spain’s then Deputy Prime Minister, Carmen Calvo, found herself in his crosshairs. He attacked her over her opposition to the proposed self-ID legislation which eventually became law. According to Spanish publication, El Común, Mar Cambrollé and his Plataforma Trans targeted Calvo for weeks, vilifying her on social media, demanding her resignation and even threatening to go on hunger strike if their demands were not met.
Then an effigy of Carmen Calvo appeared in a small square in Santiago de Compostela, the capital of Spain’s Galicia region. The effigy was hanging by its neck from a tree and bore a sign which read “I am lost… Where is the patriarchy?”
Even more shocking, however, was Cambrollé’s persecution of an octogenarian feminist campaigner who had suffered the brutality of the Franco regime.
Lidia Falcón is a lawyer, writer, journalist, activist, life-long advocate of women’s rights, the director of feminist magazine, Poder y Libertad (Power & Freedom) and the founder of the Feminist Party of Spain. She was tortured and imprisoned under the Franco dictatorship for her political activism and for speaking out for women’s rights.
As we reported at the time, in November 2020, Lidia Falcón, then aged 84, suffered the persecution of a new dictatorship. Her opposition to Spain’s self ID legislation made her a target for trans activists. Mar Cambrollé filed ‘hate crime’ complaints against Lidia Falcón because she defends women’s rights. Although the case was eventually dropped, for months Falcón lived under the threat of prosecution and imprisonment. For someone who suffered as she did under Franco, one can only imagine the stress and anxiety caused to her by Cambrollé’s spiteful actions.
The right side of history, eh?
Thursday 12th September - This Never Happens #2
REDUXX: At least five trans-identified males - two of whom are sex offenders - have been transferred to a Minnesota women’s prison.
In January 2023, the Minnesota Department of Corrections introduced a new policy allowing prisoners to be accommodated based on their self-declared ‘gender identity’ rather than their sex. Since then, at least five trans-identified males have been accommodated in MCF-Shakopee, a supposedly female-only facility.
Of these are Nathan Charles Johnson who is serving two years for aiding and abetting a burglary and Craig ‘Christina Suzanne’ Lusk who is serving a five-year sentence for the possession of methamphetamine. It was a legal action brought by Lusk in 2022 which resulted in the Minnesota Department of Corrections implementing the policy that now allows male convicts to ‘identify’ their way into the female estate.
Another of the prisoners transferred to MCF-Shakopee is convicted murderer, 52-year-old Bradley Richard Sirvio. He is serving a life sentence after beating a man to death with a hammer and setting fire to his house in November 1995.
Two of the other prisoners transferred to the Minnesota women’s prison are convicted sex offenders. 26-year-old Elijah Thomas Berryman was arrested in April 2022 and accused of sexually abusing a minor - a boy under 13 years old - on multiple occasions. Earlier this year, he pleaded guilty to four counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct and is currently serving his 25-year sentence at the women’s prison.
35-year-old Sean Windingland sexually assaulted two six year old children and posted videos of the abuse online. When questioned by law enforcement, he admitted to engaging in sexual contact with the little girls but claimed that the children had consented. In 2019 Windingland pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct.
Prosecutors sought a longer sentence for Windingland because the crimes were committed in the presence of another child and because “The acts were done with particular cruelty, including being memorialized in photographs and videos that were distributed to others and shared on the internet with an unquantifiable audience”. He is now serving his 36-year stretch at MCF-Shakopee women’s prison.
This week, a former employee at MCF-Shakopee spoke to Alpha News about her decision to resign form the Department for Corrections over its transgender policy. Alicia Beckmann said that prioritising gender identity over biological sex creates an ‘unsafe environment’ for both staff and inmates. “We house every custody level”, she said. “We have what would be considered low-level offenders… Then, you bring in biological males who are violent, who would be housed at a custody level four facility. I just believe we’re re-victimizing some of these women, re-traumatizing them.”
Friday 13th September - Labour Losing Women
Labour has elected a Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee who cannot define what a woman is and seems to believe that human beings can change sex.
Sarah Owen, Labour MP for Luton North, was elected Chair of the parliamentary Women and Equalities Select Committee this week. The following day, she appeared on BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour.
Presenter, Anita Rani, asked Owen to define what a woman is. Owen’s response did not inspire confidence in her intention or ability to defend women’s sex-based rights. She began, “I think it’s really sad that we’re still at this stage of the debate to be honest and that we have boiled down people’s fears or concerns on both sides of the argument to body parts because basically we are so much more than what our bodies are”.
Owen went on to say “What a woman to me is somebody that is going to be paid less than their male counterparts, somebody that is going to be less safe walking down the streets and somebody that faces more barriers in the workplace, in education and the health sector...”
As Karen Ingala Smith writes, “These are not examples of what a woman is, they are examples of sex-inequality. They are examples of how the sex-hierarchy operates in patriarchal societies. Indeed, they are issues that we might suppose fall within the remit of the WESC. If we managed to eradicate all these examples of sex inequality, the biological category of women would still exist. But we need to be able to identify women if we are to show how we are discriminated against”.
Owen then went on to say, “When it comes to the trans debate, we need to have that in a kind, respectful way… My committee will be made up of people that have different views, and particularly on this topic, and it will be my job to find a way through”.
But Owen has already nailed her colours to the mast.
As JK Rowling pointed out, “British women and girls are now in the hands of a politician who can't define what a woman is, but is certain men are women if they say they are”.
Saturday 14th September - This Never Happens #3
THE DAILY MAIL: A trans-identified male convicted recidivist paedophile has had his sentence extended after threatening and attacking prison guards.
In 2003 Mark Walker was sentenced to 13 years imprisonment for raping two little girls, one of whom was just four years old. Walker’s sentence was twice extended for making bomb threats, one against the then Home Secretary, Theresa May. While in prison, Walker began identifying as trans and calling himself ‘Marcia’.
Despite being found in possession of indecent images of children in his cell, threatening to kill prison officers and fellow inmates and assaulting a custody manager, Walker was released from prison in 2021.
In May 2021, Walker appeared in court and admitted two charges of making a threat to kill and one of assaulting an emergency worker plus two counts of breaching his Sexual Harm Prevention Order. He managed to dodge a custodial sentence. Judge Ray Singh gave him consecutive three-month sentences for all offences, suspending them for two years. He expressed ‘real concerns’ over releasing Walker but said there were ‘issues’ - ie Walker’s trans identity - over his continued detention in prison.
Walker’s barrister told the court, “She [sic] has not been able to go to any courses as a female in a male prison but if she [sic] was sentenced in the community there are a number of courses she could attend”. (‘She’ could and should have attended the courses designed for male sex offenders because that’s exactly what ‘she’ is.)
Only a few weeks after being released, Walker was, yet again, found to be in possession of indecent images of children. A search of his accommodation revealed various books containing photographs of naked children and further, more explicit indecent images of children secreted in his clothing. Walker admitted to breaching his Sexual Harm Prevention Order and was sentenced to 34 months in prison.
Walker is currently incarcerated in HMP Frankland, known as ‘monster mansion’ because of the number of sex offenders, terrorists and murderers held there. Because he is legally recognised as female by prison authorities, Walker has to be kept in isolation from other prisoners and is allowed to shower etc in private.
This week The Daily Mail reported that he has had his sentence extended by almost three years after attacking and threatening his prison officers. Earlier this year he sent a series of disturbing voicemail messages, threatening to cut off a man’s genitals and put them in a blender, place a bomb in and cut the brakes on his car and burn down his house. He sent a series of letters and emails to prison staff, one vowing he would shoot a warden dead, and others making vile racist comments. He also telephoned the Crimestoppers TV programme to make a false bomb threat. Furthermore, he was convicted on counts of assaulting an emergency worker.
The sentences, handed down to Walker last month, were ordered to run concurrently and will add 33 months to his prison stretch.
Sunday 15th September - Leave Them Kids Alone
THE TELEGRAPH: The NPSPCC’s guidelines on children’s sport could put minors at risk and breach safeguarding protocols, says Sex Matters.
Established in 2001, the Child Protection in Sport Unit (CPSU) was set up under the auspices of the NSPCC in response to a series of child-abuse scandals.
A CPSU briefing document called ‘Safe Use of Changing Facilities and Toilets’ is intended to help sports clubs and bodies safely manage children’s changing room and bathroom procedures. However, Sex Matters has reported that this guidance “Runs counter to good safeguarding practice” by upholding ‘gender identity’ over reality.
The guidelines state, “Using gendered changing facilities can be a source of stress for transgender and non-binary children. Sport and activity providers should consider how to support these young people to use the changing rooms that they feel comfortable with.” They go on to say that it is “Considered good practice to ensure that children are supervised by staff or volunteers of the same gender while changing”.
Sex Matters has warned that this guidance could lead to children using the changing rooms and bathrooms intended for the opposite sex and could even mean that children are supervised by adults of the opposite sex when engaged in undressing and/or using the bathroom. This is contrary to all safeguarding protocols and practices.
This is not the first time the NSPCC has been in the news over concerns it prioritises gender ideology over the safety and welfare of children. You will remember, for example, that three years ago, trainee psychotherapist, James Esses, was removed from his role as a volunteer counsellor at Childline for voicing his concerns about the influence of gender identity ideology on vulnerable children.
In April this year, The Telegraph reported on a former NSPCC volunteer who left the charity over fears that it risks grooming children into ‘aggressive trans ideology’ and has been ‘completely captured by Stonewall’.
Julia Marshall, a former police officer and the mother of three children, was an NSPCC volunteer for over 30 years. She was a regular school visitor delivering the ‘Speak Out, Stay Safe’ message, which is aimed at empowering children to recognise and report abuse. Attending a training session in 2022, Julia found “They had a whole session on pronouns and transgender children. I was astounded because we were talking about primary school children under 11”.
Julia says that volunteers were told to ask primary school children their pronouns when they delivered assemblies and workshops and were put under pressure to affirm a child’s ‘gender identity’. Julia tried to discuss her concerns with her regional and local supervisors but was ‘blanked’. She also sent a lengthy email to senior NSPCC figures over what she believed was dangerous advice to children on the charity’s website. She never received a reply. “I thought they’d really lost the plot”, she says. “I thought I can’t work for this charity any more. It’s been completely captured by Stonewall.”
Another article in The Telegraph earlier this year reported on claims that gender-distressed children are encouraging each other into harmful practices in unregulated NSPCC online chatrooms.
Five years ago the NSPCC took on trans-identified male underwear model, Munroe Bergdorf, as its first LGBTQ campaigner. Concerns about Bergdorf’s suitability for the role were raised immediately, mainly due to his social media posts encouraging vulnerable children to contact him in private and without their parents’ knowledge.
The NSPCC removed Bergdorf from this position, only to then proffer profuse apologies to him for doing so just a few days later.
But, perhaps most shockingly of all, is the story of the man who originally thought Munroe Bergdorf would make an appropriate ‘influencer’ for the country’s leading charity in the field of child safeguarding.
James Makings was the NSPCC’s Celebrity & Talent Manager. In June 2019, conversations on social media revealed that Makings was a rubber fetishist who posted photographs and videos of himself engaged in fetish / sexual activity online. It then transpired that Makings had uploaded a video in which he was wearing his rubber fetish gear and masturbating in the toilets at work. At the NSPCC.
When this news reached social media, the women trying to point out the problematic issues involved were accused of homophobia and transphobia. The NSPCC seemed far more concerned with reporting the ‘bullies’ who drew attention to this issue than with Making’s behaviour itself.
A few months later, in August 2019, the NSPCC very quietly sacked James Makings. The charity never publicly condemned his behaviour, nor did it apologise to the people it had vilified for drawing attention to this very serious issue.
Five years later and it appears the NSPCC is still prioritising ideology over the safeguarding of children. When will it start to learn from its mistakes?
See you next week.
Owen went on to say “What a woman to me is somebody that is going to be paid less than their male counterparts, somebody that is going to be less safe walking down the streets and somebody that faces more barriers in the workplace, in education and the health sector...”
So in effect Owen believes that if we all had equal pay, if we were all safe walking down the streets and if we all faced no barriers in the workplace, education and health sector then women would not exist.
The error in thinking is in the statement that some of these men, "Aren't even truly trans!" Just as not all men are a danger in women's spaces and not all men are interested in women sexually, the reason we have separate spaces is that we can't tell the good from the bad. A dress doesn't help.