Off Topic any Mxs out there

I feel sorry for your friend Beth, this shouldn't be happening in the 2020s. My wife deals with trans people daily so I'm aware and have some sympathy to their struggles.....however, complaing to rail companies about their friendly tannoy greeting makes poor Laurence come across as a bit of an attention seeker

 

...no, it makes poor Laurence a trouble-making, nit-picking **** who seems intent on alienating people from his cause

 

whats he got against grass

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Looks like a terf war

 

maybe its just because we dont care

 

The rest of society is brimming with tolerance, and saying, you are free to do what you want without censure. We don't care what you do in the privacy of your home. But still that's not enough... Now, we have to talk about them. Now they must be noticed, it's me, me, me, look at me...

**** off and just go and enjoy your life peacefully like everyone else.

 

Maybe Kiwi does care Goldhawk.....because he is always bring all this to our attention ...


I agree with you... everyone should be allowed to get on with their lives as they see fit...nowt to do with the rest of us

 

she must have an album coming out

 

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hope he wins


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Trans swimmer Lia Thomas nominated for NCAA Woman of the Year award

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Trans swimmer Lia Thomas nominated for NCAA Woman of the Year award
The University of Pennsylvania has nominated transgender swimmer Lia Thomas for the 2022 NCAA Woman of the Year award

 

RUGBY UNION
Transgender women banned from female contact rugby in England

Martyn Ziegler
, Chief Sports Reporter
Friday July 22 2022, 2.40pm, The Times

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The new rules are in stark contrast to the previous policy update in 2019
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Transgender women will not be allowed to play in female contact rugby competitions in England, under new recommendations from the RFU.

Until now, the governing body has allowed some transgender women to play women’s rugby but they have had to apply on a case-by-case basis. However, after a two-year review, it is now recommending to the RFU Council that anyone whose sex was assigned as male at birth should not be able play girls’ or women’s rugby.

That falls into line with World Rugby’s guidelines and is similar to those announced recently by rugby league and the international swimming federation, Fina.

At the moment, there are five or six transgender women playing community rugby in England — they applied to the RFU who decided to permit it on the basis there would be no increased risk to opponents based on their size and weight.

Those rules also applied to the Allianz Premier 15s, though it is understood that no transgender women play in the elite game in England.

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The recommendation to the RFU Council will be that it follows World Rugby’s rules, which apply to the senior England women’s side. Girls and boys will still be able to play in the same teams up until the age of 12.

The World Rugby rules state: “Transgender women may not currently play women’s rugby… because of the size, force and power-producing advantages conferred by testosterone during puberty and adolescence, and the resultant player welfare risks this creates.”

The RFU said that it “has contacted registered trans female players, on whom the policy will have a direct impact to offer its support in continuing to encourage them to participate in the sport”.

The RFU recommendations add: “In the male category it is proposed that players whose sex recorded at birth is female may play if they provide their written consent and a risk assessment is carried out.”

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Nadine Dorries, the culture secretary, held a round table meeting for British sports organisations last month and urged them to adopt the policy announced by Fina, which states that anyone who has gone through male puberty cannot enter women’s events in elite swimming competition.

Fina’s policy means that the transgender American college swimmer, Lia Thomas, will be blocked from participating in the female category at the 2024 Olympics. The policy also covers diving, which prompted Tom Daley, the Olympic 10m synchro champion, to say that he was “furious” at the decision.

 

COMMENT

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As her foolish critics even cancel Quidditch, the kind of courage that JK Rowling displays is a rare and precious thing



Anyone familiar with the wonderful world of Harry Potter, who has read the books or seen the film adaptations, will know what I mean by Quidditch. But for the uninitiated, let me explain: Quidditch is a magical sport dreamt up by that brilliant creator of fantasy fiction, J.K. Rowling.



It is a fast-paced, violent, chaotic game played by witches and wizards, in two teams of seven, on broomsticks, flying about 30ft above the ground. The rules are daft but it is tremendously exciting, a game invented to thrill and inspire children’s imagination.


But I’m sorry to say some adults didn’t get the memo. In recent years, Quidditch has been awkwardly reimagined as a non-magical sport, played by grown-ups, at ground level. There are now nearly 600 real-life Quidditch teams in 40 countries.


I have watched videos of these Quidditch matches on YouTube and it is one of the silliest spectacles I’ve ever seen. The point of Quidditch is that it is supposed to be played on flying broomsticks, not by people running around holding lengths of PVC piping between their legs.


And now the real-life Quidditch players have gone even further in their silliness. A pompous statement issued jointly last week by the International Quidditch Association (IQA), United States Quidditch (USQ) and Major League Quidditch (MLQ) announced their decision to change the name of the game to ‘Quadball’, so as to distance themselves from J.K. Rowling (who, incidentally, has never endorsed the sport outside the pages of her books).


The statement made clear that it is Rowling’s passionate engagement in the debate on trans issues and her defence of women’s rights in the face of radical trans-activism that is a major factor in the decision. But a desire to grow the sport commercially is also a consideration for the cynical bigwigs of Quiddich. Any association with Rowling is regarded as damaging to that ambition.

‘J.K. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter book series, has increasingly come under scrutiny for her anti-trans positions,’ their statement said. ‘LGBTQ+ advocacy groups like GLAAD [the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation] and the Human Rights Campaign, as well as the three lead actors in the Harry Potter film series, have criticised her stances.’

For trans activists, J.K. Rowling has become public enemy number one — a figure who must be denounced and ostracised at every opportunity for daring to challenge the hardline dogma of those who insist that biological sex does not exist and that therefore anyone who identifies themselves as a woman has a right to occupy female-only spaces, even if others might feel threatened in the presence of biological males.

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In recent years, Quidditch has been awkwardly reimagined as a non-magical sport, played by grown-ups, at ground level
This month, police confirmed they were investigating a death threat that J.K. Rowling had received via Twitter from a trans activist, while any public institution with links to her is under pressure to expunge her name from its records.

In 2020, Rowling returned a human rights award after she was accused of having ‘diminished the identity’ of trans people. And a few days ago it emerged that the £14,337-a-year King’s High School for girls in Warwick axed J.K. Rowling as a house name earlier this year. In 2016 the school proudly announced that pupils had chosen the author as an ‘inspirational’ figure after whom they would name a house. But following a new conversation on ‘people who changed the world for the better’, she has been binned.

In January, The Boswells School in Chelmsford, Essex, which specialises in the performing arts, also replaced her as a house name over her ‘comments and viewpoints surrounding trans people’.

Younger members of staff at publishers Hachette even tried to boycott the thrillers that Rowling now publishes under her Robert Galbraith pseudonym (though their bosses were having none of it, no doubt because Rowling’s sales bankroll the whole publishing house).

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the publication of Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone, the first in the seven-book series. It should be a year to celebrate Rowling’s amazing legacy, which has introduced millions of youngsters worldwide to the joy of reading. Yet publishers, who have raked in many millions from her work, are giving the author the cold shoulder.

Tom Tivnan, managing editor of The Bookseller magazine, wrote recently of his experience at the Bologna Children’s Book Fair, a major event in the publishing calendar.

‘I was talking to foreign publishers about the anniversary and they said: “We’re going to be very quiet about this”.’

Rowling has, of course, been very publicly reprimanded by those who ought to be most grateful to her: the young actors who owe their careers and vast fortunes to the Harry Potter franchise.

In an act of eye-watering ingratitude, Emma Watson, the self-appointed princess of all things woke, has said she won’t work on another film if J.K. Rowling is involved with the project.

Daniel Radcliffe and Rupert Grint have also condemned her. So it was no wonder Rowling was absent from the glittering celebration to mark the 20th anniversary of the Harry Potter films last November, while those who are famous only because of her posed on the red carpet.

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For trans activists, J.K. Rowling has become public enemy number one — a figure who must be denounced at every opportunity for daring to challenge their hardline dogma
I am roughly the same age as these actors, who are all part of the generation that grew up with Harry Potter. Indeed, Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone was the first ‘big’ book I read on my own.

Once hooked, I would join the queue outside our local bookshop at midnight — it opened specially — to buy the latest in the series as soon as it was released. And I was distraught when I learnt that the family holiday in France would clash with publication of the final book (luckily a friend, who joined us, was able to import several copies from England).

I was far from unusual. Almost all my friends shared a passion for Potter, and many still do.

As well as encouraging reluctant young readers — particularly boys — to give books a go, Rowling is credited with revitalising the children’s publishing industry, which was in the doldrums during the 1990s. Now, the children’s book market outsells the general fiction market.

In fact, Harry Potter broke the taboo on adults reading books intended for children, partly because of the publisher’s clever strategy of producing both a colourful ‘children’s’ cover and an ‘adult’ cover that made the book look more like a gothic thriller.

Now, the most committed readers of young adult fiction are surprisingly old — in their 20s and beyond. And it is some of these real-life Peter Pans who have developed an unhealthy relationship with the fiction they love.

It is a sad irony that so many of the Potter Generation have turned against the author whose work they adored, encouraged by trans activists who have been trying — and failing — to ‘cancel’ J.K. Rowling for four years.

The hate campaign began in earnest in 2018, after Rowling ‘liked’ a tweet that described transgender women as ‘men in dresses’ and described the ‘misogyny’ of the Left.

That ‘like’ was certainly ill-judged and a spokesman for Rowling later dismissed the incident as a ‘clumsy and middle-aged moment’. But it revealed that Rowling was engaged with the ‘gender-critical’ discussion being aired, with increasing passion from both sides, on social media.

It suggested she might be having doubts about the orthodox view on trans activism — and I wondered at the time if she would eventually go public with her views as the debate took off. A few months later, she did.

In December 2019, Rowling tweeted her support for Maya Forstater, a British businesswoman who had lost her job after she tweeted ‘men cannot change into women’.

In a now famous tweet, Rowling wrote:

‘Dress however you please.

Call yourself whatever you like.

Sleep with any consenting adult who’ll have you.

Live your best life in peace and security.

But force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real?

#IStandWithMaya #ThisIsNotADrill'

It was a sober and compassionate response — a careful attempt to balance the rights of trans people and women.

A few months later, she tweeted that she objected to the phrase ‘people who menstruate’ because it avoided the word ‘women’. And she followed that up in June 2020 with a long and thoughtful essay on her blog post — later published in this newspaper — that laid out her concerns about trans activism, a political movement she believed had grown increasingly disconnected from reality.

Rowling also described for the first time her own experiences of sexual and domestic violence at the hands of her ex-husband, explaining the empathy she felt for trans victims of abuse as a result.

‘I want trans women to be safe,’ she wrote. ‘At the same time, I do not want to make natal girls and women less safe.’

All hell broke loose. Copies of Rowling’s books were burned and the footage shared online. #RIPRowling started trending on Twitter. Torrents of abuse were directed at her, with words such as ‘bi**h’, ‘wh*re’ and ‘hag’ recurring.

Lloyd Russell-Moyle, MP, at the time a Labour shadow minister, wrote that Rowling had ‘used’ her experiences of violence to ‘undermine the rights of others’. A tabloid newspaper ran a front-page story reporting that her ex-husband said he was ‘not sorry’ for assaulting her.

Some Potter obsessives claimed to be so upset by Rowling’s comments, they had their Harry Potter-themed tattoos removed. One told the New York Post he was inking over his three-inch tattoo because ‘J.K. Rowling is such a disgusting, bigoted person that I have no reason to find joy in her writing any longer’.

J.K. Rowling could have backed down. She could have kept her awards and her adoring fanbase. She could have lived a quieter life. Instead, she has continued to speak out on an issue she believes to be profoundly important for our society and for women’s rights, knowing she would pay a price for doing so in vitriol and worse.

In December last year, she responded to guidance issued by Police Scotland that rapes could be recorded as carried out by a woman if the perpetrator ‘identifies as female’.

With apologies to George Orwell, she adapted a quote from Nineteen Eighty-Four, tweeting: ‘War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. The Penised Individual Who Raped You Is a Woman.’

Recently the abuse she has endured has turned even nastier. Last month, a trans activist urged Twitter users to send a bomb to the author’s home. The offensive tweet including a picture of the Harry Potter creator, her family’s address, an image of a pipe bomb and the cover of a bomb-making handbook.

But J.K. Rowling will not give in, and that is what so infuriates her critics. Despite their best efforts to intimidate her into silence and drive her out of public life, they have found they cannot ‘cancel’ J.K. Rowling: she is too talented, too rich, too famous, too beloved — and too fearless.

She is still writing blockbuster bestsellers, with a new instalment of her Robert Galbraith series due next month. And Harry Potter is as successful as ever, with sales shooting up over lockdown.

In Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone, there is a line spoken by Albus Dumbledore, the headmaster of Hogwarts, that for me has taken on a particular relevance in the Rowling controversy: ‘There are all kinds of courage. It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to our enemies, but just as much to stand up to our friends.’

Courage of that kind is a rare and precious thing. And J.K. Rowling has it in spades.

■ Louise Perry is the author of The Case Against The Sexual Revolution

 

Kiwi another non story.

Quidditch name and rights etc are now held by Warner Bros, and they have rumbling on about trademarks and naming etc for years....and threatening action.

So the "Quidditch sport" has now renamed itself in a huge virtue signalling event, saying its renaming because of JK Rowling TERF views.... and nowt to do with them being told to by Warner Bros.

After all...I can see WBros. point.
They don't actually fly about on broomstick chasing a flying golden ball...do they

 

I think the story was more about the attempted cancellation of jk than about quidditch
But maybe I need to read it again

 

I only skimmed through it but thought it had something to do with soup.

 

Exactly...it was manufactured story. The background had little to do with JK Rowlings......the story was blown up to include her...so much woke.

 

I still think it's mainly a story about how jk has been vilified for her views on chest feeders than anything else

 

hey its ok
we are all the same now
or somthink
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