The Mundane Transfeminine

When Discomfort Becomes Law: The Dangerous Logic of the Darlington Nurses Case How an employment tribunal turned prejudice into principle and left trans workers with nowhere to go

A good blog on the Darlington bigots ET tribunal decision today. A bad decision, which effectively says it’s reasonable to segregate away trans people. Not judicially precedent-setting but in the epilegal sphere of HR departments likely to be quite influential.

They nearly killed this woman. Then they went on national TV and tried to smear her.

"Material harmful to minors" means any description or representation of nudity, sexual conduct, sexual excitement, or sadomasochistic abuse when it (i) appeals to the prurient, shameful, or morbid interest of minors; (ii) is patently offensive to prevailing standards in the adult community as a whole with respect to what is suitable material for minors; and (iii) is, when taken as a whole, lacking in serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors.

Virginia has become the latest state to propose a special tax (HB720) on whatever the state deems "harmful to minors." Not just porn, but sex ed, LGBTQ+ art, romantasy, who knows what else.

"The power to tax is the power to destroy." — Justice John Marshall, McColloch v Maryland (1819)

'Listen to women' NHS nurses say, after tribunal rules sharing changing room with trans woman 'violated dignity' However, the tribunal dismissed several other claims, finding that the trans woman had not harassed or victimised the nurses.

I find this sickening, tbh. The claim that simply being in the presence of a trans woman creates a “a hostile, humiliating and degrading environment” for cis women could not be more transphobic* if it tried.

*Literally: showing discrimination against, aversion to, or fear of, transgender people

“There was a lot of advice being put out on social media that was just plain wrong,” she said, with particular anger at the Good Law Project, which has brought a judicial review against the EHRC interim update, published shortly after the court ruling."

But while the Supreme Court’s ruling should have settled the issue, it instead promoted an “astonishing” backlash, she believes because “people were led to believe they had rights that they didn’t have." “I was surprised first of all, in the aftermath of the judgement, that there was any pushback really at all because I thought it was clear,” she said. “I understood that people would be upset, but I thought they might understand that this was the law."

Thanks to Akua Reindorf KC for crediting us for stopping the tsunami of bigotry she sought to start following the For (Some) Women Scotland case. 1/2

Donate to Help Me Escape Incestuous Home, organized by Danna Velazquez Hi, my name is Ursa, I’m a 20 y/o biracial Mexican lesbian and I'm currently reaching o… Danna Velazquez needs your support for Help Me Escape Incestuous Home

!! Hi, I’m Snot and I am seeking to escape my incestuous home, it would help a lot if you can check out my GFM, share and donate.
Thank you so much!
🔗 gofund.me/2352bf047

The second question: Was UATX a hard-right project from the start? Based on my reporting, I don’t think it was. I was struck by the sincerity of the commitment to free speech and open inquiry from so many of the people with whom I spoke. A few were Trump supporters, but many more were best identified as anti-woke moderates or liberals. The university’s saga has a strong sense of historical contingency — that it could have gone quite differently had some high-leverage moments gone otherwise. A notable example is the episode surrounding Dan’s alleged violation and expulsion, which several former staffers and faculty suggested was exploited by the Straussians as evidence of dysfunction in their successful second coup attempt.

Politico:

"We've got the world's most credulous reporter here to tell you that a university sponsored by billionaires whose anti-trans faculty are at the cutting edge of 18th-century race science wasn't a hard-right project."

Jesus Christ.

🚨BREAKING: DEMS DRAW RED LINE IN DHS APPROPS: NO FUNDING INCREASE FOR ICE. POLICY RIDERS GROWING. STORY COMING IN MIGRANT INSIDER

I find it necessary these days to affirm the obvious because the descent into fascism is mostly a continuous, not discrete, process so here it goes:

these are internal checkpoints by secret police for what is routine freedom of movement.

The jackboots are out here saying "One heritage, one people" and liberals are like "One more training can fix this, just one more training bro please"

Mitqual's son Firas holding a sign that reads don't skip

Diseases are spreading in Gaza and medicine prices are extremely high. We urgently need $400 to survive. The situation is dire and unbearable. We are exhausted by illness and fear. Please help us and do not ignore our cries. Every minute matters. Please act now!!!!

gofund.me/78acabc1

incandescent rage. people not subject to criminalization in this country don’t understand that this. is. policing. and this type of sexual violence is completely inseparable from it.

11. The Tribunal also upheld the complaint of indirect sex discrimination, in that: (1) The Trust applied the two PCPs (paras 274-278; 401-402). (2) The PCPs put women at a particular disadvantage when compared to men, in that women are more likely than men to experience feelings or apprehensions of, fear, distress and/or humiliation by, in effect, being required to change their clothes in front of a member of the opposite sex. The Claimants were all put to that disadvantage (paras 257-273; 408-424) (3) The Tribunal concluded that, by permitting a biological male, trans woman to e the female changing room, the Trust was in breach of the Workplace 3 Case Number: 2501192/2024 & others (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992 (paras 309; 370-373; 381; 430-436, 440) and had infringed the claimants' right to respect for private life under article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The Trust was unable to show that the PCPs were a proportionate means of achieving its aims (paras 425-446).

NHS Darlington full judgment and media summary.

www.judiciary.uk/judgments/ms...

What does a country look like without internet? I don’t know how many people have been killed in the recent protests and what is happening in my county. The national TV programs are bullshit and all propaganda, as always. There is no popular search engine (Google or whatever), no chat clients (Whatsapp, Telegram), no social media (Instagram, X, Facebook) and even local chat clients and social media have been disabled. All .com, .net, .org and many other top level domains are down, and only .ir websites might work. Believe it or not there are a few news websites working, like varzesh3.ir (a sports News website) or zoomit.ir (an IT and technology website), but they don’t have any news to publish and they have disabled the comment section by the command of Intelligence Services of the Islamic Republic. You know why they disabled the comment section? Because people might use the comment section of websites to communicate with each other.

I worked with Arash, a game journalist and developer, on a couple projects on the history of games in Iran, and we've kept in touch since. Quite striking to see what's going on over there as people try to find ways to communicate and the government shuts them down.

JUST IN: The Virginia Senate has approved a constitutional amendment to enshrine abortion rights.

The Virginia House already did this on Wednesday.

It's official: there'll be a referendum later this year on the issue.

Gavin Newsom has never had a homeless, a working unhoused, or an affordable housing advocate on his podcast despite governing California.

So yeah I think it’s weird that he’s entertained & platformed multiple fascists while grinning, nodding & relenting to their easily defeatable talking points.

Trans Victims Fight for Rohingya Justice in The Hague — Assigned Targeted for rape and harrassment, visibly trans members of Myanmar's Rohingya ethnic group are among the most vulnerable victims of the regime.

ONLY on Assigned Media: Rohingya refugees from Myanmar have accused the regime of genocide. Some of the most vulnerable are trans.

Crack reporter @mollyquell.bsky.social comes to us from The Hague to report on trans oppression as part of the ethnic cleansing of Myanmar.

For the nth time, reminded that practices that "the West" claimed epitomized the moral perfidy of the Eastern Bloc when I was growing up (such as violent repression, family separation, mass surveillance, restrictions on free movement) are now the common practice of the immigration-obsessed "West"

I left uni around 10 years ago with a debt of £45,000. After 10 years of continual payments adding up to thousands and thousands of pounds my debt is...£45,500. My peers with rich parents who could afford the fees upfront won't be paying 9% of their salary for 30 years.

Yet another easily avoidable national calamity here that was forced through despite of overwhelming opposition from people who knew what they were talking about. We can only chuck it on the teetering pile of unnecessary disasters that government after government has racked up, and nobody can explain

it's a very obvious reality that a core Republican policy for 50 fucking years has been to ensure the public is as ignorant and misinformed as possible, yet that somehow never occurs to big brain six figure mainstream political journalists and pundits that might be something worth digging into 2:22 PM • Jan 15, 2026 12 reposts 1 quote 67 likes 1 save ① 13 O 67 刁企… Karl Bode @karlbode.com • 10m why if I were a suspicious man, I'd start to wonder if mainstream media doesn't actively work to filter out journalistic voices that make this clear, ensuring that any remaining journalists that past muster are actively complicit in the effort to disorient the plebs ① 3 •

This is where I reached in about 2021 and what happens is: you stop asking why they’re doing their jobs so badly - there’s no way to explain that - and you start understanding that they’re mostly doing the jobs they were actually hired to do, which are quite different to the ones you see in movies.

The world of today looks bad, but take hope: we’ve been here before and got through it – and we will again | Martin Kettle As I write my last regular column for the Guardian, my thoughts turn to the lessons and hope we can take from history, says Guardian columnist Martin Kettle

This is a dream, it’s Edward G. Robinson watching meadows and waterfalls in the euthanasia booth at the end of Soylent Green. It has been made brutally clear since 2020 that no help is coming; that this is the best we should expect, ever, and that anyone who tries to change it will be scythed down.

I assume we all know the drill: an inquiry will find some minor infraction - a process not properly followed, details cited incorrectly, whatever - and then that will be proof that all of the very wackiest accusations were all true and correct, and the verdict is Damning. Over and over, now.

Not that there were serious consequences for the architects of this. Amber Rudd was back in months, it was never a serious problem for Theresa May and if anything, the political/media class now regards the whole thing as small beer. And now, this little fash conspiracy crank has everything he wants.

Starmer's Labour is now a grimly unpleasant anti-immigrant cult.

Plenty I could say about this guy but I’d focus on: zero responsibility. The government sent him to Iraq and that requires no thought at all. His job is to kill people; if you do anything at all that looks suspect to him, then you 100% deserve to die. Fuck you.

This intro to David Frost's Telegraph column sums up so much that is wrong with British politics.

Jenrick didn't need to join Reform to mainstream reactionary politics, just like Badenoch and Starmer haven't needed to either

We can't keep exceptionalising the far right and instead make accountable all of those who mainstream its politics, regardless of their affiliation in politics or the media