La Marseillaise Part 2: As Time Goes By...

Update 313 Weather on their Planet Special

Welcome to Part 2, Terven! This is a long one!

We will stick with Casablanca, of course. Ilsa Lund (played by Ingrid Bergman) turns up with her husband Victor Laszlo ( Paul Henreid) at Rick’s Café and walks back into the life of Rick ( Humphrey Bogart). It stars with Ilsa persuading Sam ( Arthur ‘Dooley’ Wilson) to play their old song, As Time Goes By. Many people (including Woody Allen) have remembered her famous line as ‘Play it again, Sam’ but she actually says ‘Play it, Sam.’ Also featured in the clip is Captain Renault ( Claud Rains). Of all the bars in all the world…hold on, that’s a bit later! 😎

The Stadium Stasi

I reported on this jaw dropping story in my Part 1 update.

Lily Zhou in The Epoch Times reports:

Gender-Critical Football Fan Banned From Matches After Premier League Compiled Detailed Dossier ( 06 February)

Linzi Smith, 34, said the 11-page dossier shows attempts to find out where she lives, leaving her afraid of walking around her residence.

(Stu Forster/Getty Images)

A Newcastle United football fan has been reported to the police and barred from matches after the Premier League compiled a detailed dossier on her, according to the fan, Linzi Smith.

The 34-year-old lifelong fan of Newcastle United football club (NUFC) said she has been banned for the rest of the current season and the next two seasons.

She also said she doesn’t feel safe walking around where she lives anymore because the dossier, which she obtained after filing a subject access request (SAR), shows attempts to find out where she lives by trawling over X, formerly known as Twitter.

Toby Young, general secretary of the Free Speech Union (FSU), which is supporting Ms. Smith, described her case as “the most egregious example” that he had come across where companies have punished their employees or customers “for exercising their lawful right to free speech.”

Mr. Young said Ms. Smith has filed a complaint with the information regulator. He also said he believes NUFC may have breached the Equality Act by discriminating against Ms. Smith.

In a video published on X on Saturday, Ms. Smith told Mr. Young she first got an email on Nov. 1 last year, saying her NUFC membership had to be suspended and she was under police investigation for a hate crime.

After some probing, she eventually got an email saying it was in relation to things she had posted on social media that could be seen as “transphobic,” Ms. Smith said.

The Telegraph, which first reported the story, said two police officers visited Ms. Smith’s home days after she had received NUFC’s email and that she agreed to attend a police station for an interview on the following day after the officers said they had grounds to arrest her.

According to the report, she was interviewed under caution about her posts on X for 25 minutes, and received a call from the police two hours later that she had not committed any offence.

Ms. Smith has said that NUFC banned her anyway despite her protest that her political views and her social media posts had nothing to do with the football club.

“They’ve just kind of laughed me off and gone ahead and done it anyway,” she said to Mr. Young.

Online Investigation and Target Profile

Ms. Smith was advised to file a SAR request to NUFC, who sent her a cache of emails and documents which The Telegraph said detailed a “four-month investigation” on her.

Among the documents was a Premier League report titled “Linzi Smith—Online Investigation and Target Profile,” according to screenshots or scans published in The Telegraph.

In the executive summary page, Ms. Smith was referred to as the “target.”

“The target resides in Newcastle within proximity of [redacted],” the document appears to say, adding that she had been “flagged for investigation by Newcastle due to posting transphobic comments on Twitter” after being reported by a “Newcastle United supporter and member of United with Pride.”

One page appears to show screenshots of her alleged “transphobic” social media posts. Another one appears to show a screenshot of her posts via a different username—which no longer exists—with a comment saying the team had identified “their” birthday “through further searches on their Twitter,” and the X handle suggested “they were born in 1989.”

The Epoch Times has not independently verified the documents.

In the video published by the FSU, Ms. Smith said of the report, “They’ve tried to find my identity. They’re trying to find where I live. They even went as far as to get screenshots off my Twitter. They searched in the search bar ‘I live’ to find anywhere I’ve said where I live, took images of me where I used to walk my dog behind my house, got Google Images of the church there in the park that’s there.”

She also said the document said she’s got ties to a place because she has worked there.

“I just don’t see what any of that has to do with any of it. And I don’t know who’s seen that information,” she said, adding that the situation feels “quite frightening.”

“I don’t feel safe walking around where I live anymore,” she said. “It’s horrible.”

The Epoch Times has reached out to NUFC and the Premier League for comments.

The Mess We’re In

Heads up that there is the next episode of The Mess on Wednesday at 17.00 GMT which will be concentrating on The Stadium Stasi.

Irish Constitutional Referendum

Women’s March for No Vote

Wonderful Gript have published loads more great photos from the March here:

https://gript.ie/photos-march-calling-for-a-no-no-vote-to-referendums-on-the-8th-march/?ct=t(EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_5_17_2022_13_19_COPY_01)

I am hoping that The Countess will put up some or all of the speeches that took place at the end of the March and I will post them when I see them. If you see them first, let me know.

Stop Press

I have managed to get hold of the speech by Sandra Adams of The Countess at the end of the rally. I hope I can get hold of more speeches.

Also good article by John McGuirk in Gript on this subject:

THE MEDIA’S SUDDEN AMBIVALENCE ABOUT MISINFORMATION (01 February)

On January 9^th, in the pages of the Irish Times, Orla O’Connor of the taxpayer-funded campaign group the National Women’s Council of Ireland [ Dusty - sometimes known as the National Willy Council since they have a trans identifying man on their board!!] told the readers of that newspaper that article 42.1 of the Irish constitution “gives the State the oppressive role of keeping women from careers or employment of our own”.

She was speaking of the present constitution, as it is today, and arguing that this “oppressive role” for the state should be removed in the referendum scheduled for March 8^th. The only problem with her argument is that it is entirely untrue.

The said article reads as follows:

1. In particular, the State recognises that by her life within the home, woman gives to the State a support without which the common good cannot be achieved.

2. The State shall, therefore, endeavour to ensure that mothers shall not be obliged by economic necessity to engage in labour to the neglect of their duties in the home.

Nowhere in that text is the state obliged to do anything: Instead, it commits itself to the entirely meaningless phrase “endeavour to ensure” – in other words, to try – to make sure that Irish mothers do not need to work outside the home to keep their families in food and clothes if they do not want to. As various legal scholars have pointed out, this is one reason why mothers receive child benefit – an effort at ensuring that they do not have to work, if they do not want to.

Further, the state is certainly not obliged to “keep women from careers or employment of their own”. That claim is nonsensical, and unsupported by the text.

This week, the Irish Times went further – trying to salvage some kind of credible argument that the article is inherently oppressive, senior columnist Fintan O’Toole blamed it for the marriage bar that used to exist for Irish women, which meant that they had to cease working in any state job after they had been married:

“This was the rule in the public service and State companies. It arose from something we now have to confront again: the belief, enshrined in the Constitution of 1937, that the proper and meaningful life for a married woman was in her home….

“Since the referendums were announced, I keep hearing and reading that this language in article 41.2 was always just aspirational and never had any real-life consequences. It wasn’t and it did. It is true, of course, that the article did not require a ban on married women in the workplace. But it gave constitutional support to the ideology that made that ban socially acceptable.”

The problem with this argument is that it is, inherently, historically illiterate: If the Irish constitution created the conditions for the marriage bar, then why did the United Kingdom also have a marriage bar, when it had and has no written constitution at all? Why did dozens of US states, which have no constitutional underpinning for such a bar? The idea that the marriage bar was – to quote O’Toole – a “real-life consequence” of article 41.2 is simply misinformation. After all: If the constitution required such a thing, and the constitution has not changed, then how could it ever have been abolished?

Nor is the avalanche of referendum misinformation limited to simply the pages of the Irish Times.

In recent weeks, the Minister for Equality, Roderic O’Gorman, told the Dáil definitively that “throuples” would not be classified as “durable relationships” should the other referendum – defining the family – be passed. Yesterday, he was explicitly contradicted by his cabinet colleague, the Minister for Finance:

The fascinating thing about the referendum campaigns, to date, is that the overwhelming majority of the “misinformation” is coming from the side of those campaigning for a “yes” vote.

This may change, of course, as the campaigns heat up: Already, this writer has seen some tweets wrongly linking the referendums with other issues, such as Covid-19 lockdowns or the proposed pandemic treaty. For the moment, though, the main culprits are those advocating for change.

Yet what’s notable is that the Irish media is displaying a sudden ambivalence about, and tolerance for, misinformation. Twice in this month alone the Irish Times has published claims about the women in the home referendum that are objectively false. Nor has there been much eagerness to get to the bottom of the argument about polygamy and throuples in the family referendum. The sole “fact-check” published by TheJournal.ie concerns a claim about whether the referendum on women will delete the word “women” from the constitution – “false”, they say, because it only deletes “woman” and “mother”.

This claim, you might note, was made on social media. The Journal were surprisingly unwilling to fact-check the claims made in the pages of the Irish Times.

Or maybe that’s not surprising at all. After all, everybody knows that misinformation can only come from the hated “far right”, right?

TUSLA Woo Woo

More from Gript!

Ben Scallan ( TUSLA OFFICIALLY OFFERING MENOPAUSE ADVICE TO MEN February) reports:

Tusla, the Child and Family Agency, is officially offering menopause advice to men and “non-binary” members of staff.

In the organisation’s Menopause Policy, which was approved in August of 2023, the agency claims that it is “committed to ensuring our people are safe, healthy, and well both physically and psychologically.”

“In accordance with the Tusla People Strategy, we aim to promote Diversity, Inclusion and Equality, ensuring staff feel confident to raise issues about their symptoms without fear of discrimination,” the text reads, adding that the purpose of the policy is to offer “support to those affected” by menopause.

Notably, menopause is the natural biological process which marks the end of a woman’s menstrual cycles, usually taking place in her 40s or 50s.

The document states that the Tusla menopause policy applies to “all staff.”

“This policy applies to all staff who are employed by Tusla,” it says.

“Menopause can be experienced by women, transgender men and people who are intersex or identify as non-binary, particularly those who may not have accessed medical forms of transition.

“Any staff member who is affected by menopause can request support which will be provided in a confidential and dignified manner.”

The document adds: “We recognise that the menopause may impact those who do not identify as female.”

The news comes after Gript revealed last November that An Post, Ireland’s postal service, is similarly offering menopause advice to men and “non-binary” members of staff – although they specified that the advice “mainly” applies to women.

Similarly, Dublin Bus officially encourages staff to learn about “crossdressing” and allows biologically-male staff to use women’s toilets and changing rooms if they identify as female, even without surgery.

Notably, Media Minister Catherine Martin previously said that the question of “What is a woman?” is “not relevant” to the upcoming referendum on the role of women in the Irish constitution.

RHS Woo Woo

I have been a member of the Royal Horticultural Society for the best part of 40 years. I was, therefore, very shocked to read the editorial in the latest edition of their monthly magazine (for February) The Garden.

The editor, Tom Howard, states:

I am proud to work for a charity that has diversity and inclusion at the heart of its new strategy. I am proud to edit a magazine with a team that is passionate about telling stories that celebrate diversity and inclusion in all its guises. And I am proud indeed of this month’s cover feature, published to coincide with LGBTQ + History Month.

Its most powerful words are spoken by RHS Council member, broadcaster and historian Wesley Kirk: “It is one of the great untold stories of horticulture, that gardens and plants have given focus and scope for the imagination of LGBTQ + plus people through the ages.”

Dusty - what does this mean and what are you talking about?

So here we are, telling an untold story.

Dusty - more like ‘here we are telling a totally fictional story.’

No one better to do so than Dr Suzanne Moss, RHS Director of Learning and Engagement [Dusty - Director of Talking B***ocks more like ] and author of Observations on the Danger of Female Curiosity. These stories remain untold, she writes, because “queer histories can be difficult to tell” [ Dusty - especially when they don’t actually exist and you have to make them up ]and it is “our challenge as curious gardeners to interrogate the historical record to review the hidden histories that lie within” [ Dusty - and then to lie through your back teeth].

Suffice to say that I will now be ending my membership of the RHS and writing to them to explain exactly why that is.

Alberta Fights Back

Thanks to wonderful Feminist Legal Clinic (FLC) for this. Apparently this is causing meltdown in the Canadian Government! Excellent!

Alberta to Restrict Medical Transition for Children ( 04 February)

Alberta is banning gender-altering surgery for children and won’t allow puberty blockers for those under 16, Premier Danielle Smith said as part of newly announced policies.

Ms. Smith also said parental consent will be required if a child wants to change pronouns at school, and that women-only sporting divisions will be off-limits to transgender athletes.

She also said that those 15 years of age and under will not be allowed to take puberty blockers or hormone therapies as part of receiving gender reassignment therapy.

The move makes Alberta the only province to ban gender transition medical procedures for children. A number of U.S. states have already implemented the ban for children.

Source: Alberta to Restrict Medical Transition for Children | The Epoch Times

‘Trans Kids’

Of course, there is no such thing as ‘trans kids’. Over to FLC again:

Opinion | As Kids, They Thought They Were Trans. They No Longer Do. ( 04 February)

Progressives often portray the heated debate over childhood transgender care as a clash between those who are trying to help growing numbers of children express what they believe their genders to be and conservative politicians who won’t let kids be themselves.

But right-wing demagogues are not the only ones who have inflamed this debate. Transgender activists have pushed their own ideological extremism, especially by pressing for a treatment orthodoxy that has faced increased scrutiny in recent years. Under that model of care, clinicians are expected to affirm a young person’s assertion of gender identity and even provide medical treatment before, or even without, exploring other possible sources of distress.

Many who think there needs to be a more cautious approach — including well-meaning liberal parents, doctors and people who have undergone gender transition and subsequently regretted their procedures — have been attacked as anti-trans and intimidated into silencing their concerns.

Stephanie Winn, a licensed marriage and family therapist in Oregon, was trained in gender-affirming care and treated multiple transgender patients. But in 2020, after coming across detransition videos online, she began to doubt the gender-affirming model. In 2021 she spoke out in favor of approaching gender dysphoria in a more considered way, urging others in the field to pay attention to detransitioners, people who no longer consider themselves transgender after undergoing medical or surgical interventions. She has since been attacked by transgender activists. Some threatened to send complaints to her licensing board saying that she was trying to make trans kids change their minds through conversion therapy.

In April 2022, the Oregon Board of Licensed Professional Counselors and Therapists told Winn that she was under investigation. Her case was ultimately dismissed, but Winn no longer treats minors and practices only online, where many of her patients are worried parents of trans-identifying children.

Detransitioners say that only conservative media outlets seem interested in telling their stories, which has left them open to attacks as hapless tools of the right, something that frustrated and dismayed every detransitioner I interviewed.

Parents are routinely warned that to pursue any path outside of agreeing with a child’s self-declared gender identity is to put a gender dysphoric youth at risk for suicide, which feels to many people like emotional blackmail.

Gay men and women often told me they fear that same-sex-attracted kids, especially effeminate boys and tomboy girls who are gender nonconforming, will be transitioned during a normal phase of childhood and before sexual maturation — and that gender ideology can mask and even abet homophobia.

“I transitioned because I didn’t want to be gay,” Kasey Emerick, a 23-year-old woman and detransitioner from Pennsylvania, told me. Raised in a conservative Christian church, she said, “I believed homosexuality was a sin.”

When she was 15, Emerick confessed her homosexuality to her mother. Her mother attributed her sexual orientation to trauma — Emerick’s father was convicted of raping and assaulting her repeatedly when she was between the ages of 4 and 7 — but after catching Emerick texting with another girl at age 16, she took away her phone. When Emerick melted down, her mother admitted her to a psychiatric hospital. While there, Emerick told herself, “If I was a boy, none of this would have happened.”

Many detransitioners say they face ostracism and silencing because of the toxic politics around transgender issues.

In a recent study in The Archives of Sexual Behavior, about 40 young detransitioners out of 78 surveyed said they had suffered from rapid onset gender dysphoria. Trans activists have fought hard to suppress any discussion of rapid onset gender dysphoria, despite evidence that the condition is real. In its guide for journalists, the activist organization GLAAD warns the media against using the term, as it is not “a formal condition or diagnosis.” Human Rights Campaign, another activist group, calls it “a right-wing theory.” A group of professional organizations put out a statement urging clinicians to eliminate the term from use.

Nobody knows how many young people desist after social, medical or surgical transitions. Trans activists often cite low regret rates for gender transition, along with low figures for detransition. But those studies, which often rely on self-reported cases to gender clinics, likely understate the actual numbers. None of the seven detransitioners I interviewed, for instance, even considered reporting back to the gender clinics that prescribed them medication they now consider to have been a mistake. Nor did they know any other detransitioners who had done so.

Source: Opinion | As Kids, They Thought They Were Trans. They No Longer Do. – The New York Times

Wales

The latest excellent newsletter from Women’s Rights Network is just out. Just one piece from there.

Do prospective Welsh MPs understand the law? (03 February)

WRN believes that girls deserve privacy, dignity, and safety in school toilets. Mixed-sex toilets don’t provide that and, in many cases, schools that don’t provide single sex toilets are acting unlawfully. But do prospective MPs understand and agree?

A WRN member asked a local councillor and prospective Labour candidate for Monmouthshire her position on a new-build school in her area that appears to be lurching down the mixed-sex toilets route. The answer suggests that Labour candidates may not really understand what ‘single sex spaces’ actually mean 

- or why they are important. 

‘I informed Ms Fookes that we had hard evidence that at least 15% of Welsh schools, who responded to a FoI request, had only mixed sex toilets.  I told her that these schools are breaking the law.  I could see from her expression that this surprised her.’

Best get used to questions on this @UKLabour. 

WRN will encourage everyone to speak up for girls. Read the blog and more about our single-sex school toilets campaign and get involved in your local community. #LetsSpeakUpForGirls.

Parents Sue School District

The daughter of Dan and Jennifer Mead had socially transitioned at school in the States and the school were deliberately withholding that information from the Meads. Eventually the Meads took their daughter out of school and she is now doing very well. Kate Anderson of Alliance Defending Freedom is acting for them in a case against the school board. The Meads say they don’t want any other parents to go through this. Excellent interview on CBN News ( best of luck to the Meads):

No Larping Men ( and Pronouns)

Given the ongoing debate that has arisen following the articles by and about Mr Hayton and his new book which I have been covering, I will make my position absolutely clear one last time with assistance from some heroes. I know that some in the Terf Resistance (including some significant figures who I greatly admire) have a different opinion and I am not looking to support any split of the movement but just to continue the very important debate that has broken out. We all believe in free speech so I am sure we can continue to pursue this debate in the spirit of resistance to the gender madness.

We do not want any larping men going into women’s single sex spaces or involved in women’s sports however reasonable they might seem to be. Nor do we want them involved in our groups.

With regard to pronouns, in terms of those on our side of the argument who say that those of us who refuse to use preferred pronouns are compelling their speech and thus acting like the trans rights activists (TRAs), Menno points out that it is the TRAs who are seeking to compel our speech by making us use preferred pronouns. We are simply seeking to tell the truth. If you respond to someone who says that the earth is flat by pointing out that the earth is round, you are not compelling anyone’s speech but simply pointing out the truth.

Others on our side of the argument say that this is not an important issue. Menno quotes someone on Twitter who stated: “ You cannot defeat an ideology dedicated to redefining your language, if you allow them to redefine the language that defines you.”

Simone de Beauvoir said: “The oppressor would not be so strong if he did not have accomplices among the oppressed.”

Please do let me have your thoughts, dear readers.

I support the position as explained below by EDI Jester, Kellie-Jay and Mr Menno.

And here is Mr Menno’s song:

https://twitter.com/MrMennoTweets/status/1754559729794273433

Now You See Me, Now You Don’t

JL in her as ever comprehensive Week in the War on Women on the Glinner Update reports on a man who claims to be ‘gender fluid’ but only when running (!!) who has ‘won’ a Spanish mountain race in the women’s category. I only draw attention to this because it seems like proof perfect that all of this gender ideology is a total load of b***ocks!! And see the next piece in this update!!!

https://grahamlinehan.substack.com/p/a-week-in-the-war-on-women-monday-e2b

Transing The Dead

If there are any members of the Terf Resistance who are still thinking of voting Labour at the next UK General Election (!!!!!!!), please listen to this video from EDI Jester:

Flemish Film Awards

As predicted the new ‘fashion’ of having gender neutral awards in awards ceremonies has led to more men getting awards.

Ashifa Kassam and Jon Henley in The Guardian (Flemish film awards under fire after men win most prestigious gender-neutral categories 05 February) report:

Stef Aerts, right, at the Ensors awards ceremony. He said changes had been made with ‘good intentions’ but had come too early for the industry. Photograph: REX/Shutterstock© Photograph: REX/Shutterstock

The Flemish film and television awards are facing calls to temporarily do away with gender-neutral categories amid concerns that the switch has left women routinely shut out of the top awards.

At the Ensors awards on Saturday male actors cleaned up the categories for best lead and supporting actors. It was an echo of 2022 – the first year that the awards ceremony axed gendered categories – when men also walked away with each of the four awards recognising the best actors.

The results prompted calls to temporarily revert back to the traditional format. “I think we should abolish it for a while and look for another way,” actor Aimé Claeys, who won best lead actor for the TV series 1985, told the Flemish public broadcaster VRT. “Because there are just as many women who deserve just as much to win such prizes. But it’s not working yet.”

The debate has cropped up since award ceremonies around the world began scrapping gendered categories. Last year the Brit awards, which went gender neutral in 2021 after realising that the categories excluded non-binary people, faced a backlash after the nominees for best artists were all male.

At Saturday’s Ensors awards, held in Ostend, Belgium, the actor Stef Aerts said he recognised that the switch had been made with “good intentions” but had perhaps come too soon because of the barriers that remain for women in the industry, such as the “very different roles” being written for men and women.

Endpiece

As regular readers will know, I am an Irish rugby fan so apologies for ending with the great start by Ireland to the Six Nations by beating France:

However, for those who don’t like rugby, let’s have a song 😊

I mentioned the French Resistance in the last update and Joséphine Baker worked for the Resistance, so here she is singing J’ai deux amours:

The next update will probably be on Thursday, Terven.

If you like this update, please send to a friend. Until next time, Terven. This isn’t over yet! Please subscribe for free, like and comment.