Amnesty UK kicks women again.

No wonder they dragged their feet.

So the thinking is that women in the UK are spoiled pampered bitch Karens because they’re not Syrian refugees? Safety and privacy are not a general need and right but a privilege, which Karens haven’t earned? Is that it?

Originally a comment by Bjarte Foshaug at Miscellany Room.

I don’t claim any expertise on social media algorithms, but I assume they are basically designed to maximize the number of clicks by applying heuristics like “people who clicked on X in the past were more likely than expected by chance to also click on Y” (I am sure there are others here who can correct me if I’m completely off the mark). If so, it’s telling that the YouTube algorithm started suggesting a lot more Right-wing crap after I began specifically looking for gender critical material. There’s a twist to the story, however. Recently (for reasons I hope are only too obvious) I have, once again, been watching a lot of material on the threats to liberal democracy from the MAGA crowd. And, what do you know, suddenly there’s noticeable uptick in TERF-bashing material in my suggestions!

As I have previously said, I have no doubt that this is largely due to the fact that Right-leaning sources tend to be the only ones willing to give a platform to anyone not 100% uncritical of gender ideology (just like Left-leaning sources tend to be the most welcoming platforms for material critical of Trump). Once again, we’re not in the luxurious position of having lots of attractive options to chose from, and sometimes you have to make a common cause with Stalin to defeat Hitler. But as I pointed out back then, some of the people on the gender critical “side” had already been saying things that made me uncomfortable (usually along the lines of “Trump may not be perfect, but…”), and many others have joined them since then.

It would be one thing if these people were consistently portraying Trump as the lesser of two evils (I would still think they were wrong, but “reasonable people can disagree” and all that), but in many cases their ethical standards seem to have been adjusted to the point where Trump is no longer considered an obvious “evil” at all. Once again, I think cognitive dissonance is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Even if you just make an entirely “pragmatic” decision to work with the MAGA crowd to stop the medical experimentation on children, the destruction of female-only spaces etc., you now have a stake in defending your choice (“if they really were that awful, a decent person like myself wouldn’t be working with them”). You also have a stake in keeping the alliance together, not antagonizing your new bedfellows etc., and, before you know it, you’re in a justification spiral pushing you ever further to the Right, until attempts to overturn an election, inciting a violent insurrection, sucking up to Putin, a lifetime of crime and corruption, grabbing women by the pussy, suggesting that the “Second Amendment People” take care of one’s political rival etc. are all within your standards of acceptable behavior.

I also suspect there’s a justification working in the opposite direction: We can’t defeat the Trumpist assault on liberal democracy alone, and the only realistic alternatives* are the same people who endorse medical experimentation on children as well as biological males in women’s toilets, changing rooms, sports, prisons, rape and domestic abuse shelters etc. But since the latter, at the very least, remain dedicated to basic democratic rules of the game, like accepting the outcome of elections, you decide to support them against the MAGA crowd, which, once again, means you have a stake in defending your choice: “if they really were that awful, a decent person like myself wouldn’t be voting for them”, so you start making excuses for the excesses of gender ideology, and, once again, you’re in a justification spiral pushing you ever further towards the (woke) left. Either way, liberal values, the respect for evidence and logic etc. lose.

*Obviously the American two-party system makes this problem a whole lot worse.

So, looking for a few specks of gold in the giant pool of dung, we find Bad Kennedy saying Big Sugar and Big Salt are not all that good for us.

The former environmental attorney – who still must face confirmation by the Senate – is considered by many to be a controversial pick, given his history of making baseless health claims, including that vaccines can cause autism and that wifi technology causes cancer.

Yet some of his ideas around reforming the FDA have found support from health experts, lawmakers and concerned consumers alike – including some Democrats.

…

Leading up to the election, Kennedy – a former Democrat – offered several ideas for tackling chronic diseases under his slogan “Make America Healthy Again”.

He has frequently advocated for eliminating ultra-processed foods – products altered to include added fats, starches and sugars, like frozen pizzas, crisps and sugary breakfast cereals, that are linked to health problems like cancer, cardiovascular disease and diabetes.

There. Finally. An advocacy that’s not completely wacko. The thing about those ultra-processed foods is that in addition to being empty calories, they are also addictive. Bad combination. They’re not addictive like heroin, of course, but they are in the sense that they make it all too easy to keep munching away – they’re engineered to do that.

Part of Kennedy’s new mandate will include overseeing the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which has over 18,000 employees.

The agency is in charge of ensuring the safety of pharmaceuticals and the US food supply, but has come under fire in recent years from some lawmakers and consumer groups, who have accused it of a lack of transparency and action on food safety.

…

“There are entire departments, like the nutrition department at the FDA … that have to go, that are not doing their job,” Kennedy told MSNBC this month.

But then he also promotes drinking raw milk, so we’re back in the giant pool of dung.

Exactly so.

New monster much like the old monster.

Elon Musk is so excited to start his new gig ruining the federal government that he’s getting an early start by goading his millions of followers to cyberbully government employees.

This week, Musk took aim at Ashley Thomas, the director of climate diversification for the U.S. International Finance Corporation—a highly technical role that involves developing ways of securing agriculture and infrastructure against extreme weather, one agency official told The Wall Street Journal.

Well we can’t have that. We mustn’t do anything to make sure agriculture and infrastructure can withstand extreme weather. Who needs agriculture and infrastructure?

Speaking of fake jobs, last week, Donald Trump announced that Musk would be co-heading the Department of Government Efficiency, an advisory board set on slashing the government budget by a trillion dollars, hoping to cut personnel and essential government services … so they can be snatched up by government contractors or outsourced to private companies … owned by billionaires … like Musk.

As long as the billionaires are making more billions, everything is fine.

Here is Janet Inglis explaining what’s wrong with Tim “Sarah” McBride intruding on women:

He’s a man.

A man who has taken photos of himself entering women’s toilets.

A man who has campaigned relentlessly for an end to women’s single sex spaces and sports.

A man who uses resources intended for women only.

A man who uses women only services.

These are all services, mitigations and safeguards intended for women so we can more fairly enjoy the freedoms and amenity of an advanced society that has largely been created by and for men.

Women need these things.

Men like Tim McBride want to destroy them.

The fact he wears his womanface costume in the corridors of power is a shocking affront to all women.

What the hell has happened to people?!

Men pretending to be women and demanding the rest of us pretend to believe them is not okay!

He is now a powerful tool for the destruction of women’s rights, safety and autonomy in one of the most powerful places in the world.

Other than that…

Guardian US columnist Margaret Sullivan frowns in the direction of Republican Nancy Mace, because of Mace’s failure to pretend that a man who calls himself Sarah McBride is a woman. Women are supposed to embrace everyone! It’s in the paperwork! It comes with the territory! Women are not allowed to disbelieve men who claim to be women, because that’s Not Kind.

I would much rather share a ladies’ room or a locker room with Sarah McBride than with Nancy Mace.

McBride, of course, was just elected to Congress and, in January, will be the highest-ranking elected official in America who is transgender. The 34-year-old comes to the US House of Representatives after serving in the Delaware legislature; before that, she was the national press secretary of the Human Rights Campaign.

And, by the way, to be clear, as Sullivan so carefully isn’t, McBride is a man. He’s one of those men who expects everyone to pretend he’s a woman. He also expects flattery and deference for being trans. He wants to have it both ways, as men who claim to be women always do.

Mace, a member of Congress from South Carolina since 2021, has been on an ugly campaign in recent weeks clearly intended to belittle and marginalize McBride – and to get on TV as much as possible doing so. She has filed a resolution, and the House speaker, Mike Johnson, has given it his nod of approval, that would somehow force trans people to keep out of the congressional bathrooms that reflect their gender identity.

But workplace bathrooms aren’t there to reflect people’s idenninies, they’re there so that people can relieve themselves and clean up while at work.

On Wednesday, McBride reacted with dignity to all the performative insults and abuse. She simply responded that she would follow the rules and that she’s in Congress to represent her Delaware district; I’m sure she’ll eventually find ways to continue her admirable advocacy.

Cool about the dignity, but what about the dignity of the women who bump into him in the congressional bathrooms? Why is his dignity more important than theirs? What is actually so very dignified about pretending to be the sex you’re not?

“As a trans person myself, I’m really worried about where this is headed,” wrote Parker Molloy, who writes incisively about politics and media in her newsletter the Present Age. “I spend each day worrying about whether or not the healthcare that keeps me alive will remain legal, whether I’m going to face new restrictions on where I’m allowed to exist in public, what would happen to me if (god forbid) I wound up in prison for some reason, and whether or not my identity documents like my passport will be retroactively made invalid.”

Interesting. Now think about what women worry about. Think about the new and peculiar worries women have to deal with thanks to the juggernaut of trans ideology.

But he won’t, of course, any more than McBride will. They don’t care. The stars of this movie are the men in lipstick, not the women just trying to get away from them.

Originally a comment by Bjarte Foshaug on This miasmic swamp of delusional bullshit.

We keep using the word “trans” as if it meant one thing, when the differences between a sensitive, “girly” boy who likes dolls and dresses (previously likely to grow up gay), a teenage girl with no prior history of gender dysphoria who comes to see herself as a “boy” (or “non-binary”, “queer” etc.) through social contagion from friends and online influencers, and a porn-obsessed straight man who gets turned on by the idea of being his own jerk-off fantasy couldn’t be more glaring. We also keep talking about ”gender dysphoria” as a single, one-size-fits-all diagnosis with a single cause (being born in the wrong body) and a single cure (medically ”correcting” the body), when, in fact, different people seek to escape their sex for very different reasons. If anything “gender dysphoria” is a symptom rather than a disease: Something to be explained rather than an explanation. The following is my modest attempt at identifying the main ingredients of the gender cocktail as I currently understand them.

1. The Social Contagion Aspect

Despite attempts to appropriate non-Western concepts of third genders [1] in support of gender ideology, the modern gender identity movement is very much a recent Western cultural phenomenon. Many have pointed out the parallels between the current explosion in trans identification among teenagers and previous mental health fads like repressed memories, multiple personality disorder, eating disorders, various kinds of self-harm (e.g. cutting) etc. These trends all spread throughout the population over time through social contagion, and in every case teenage girls were vastly over-represented among the afflicted.

The physical and hormonal changes associated with puberty can be distressing enough in themselves, especially for girls, and are often accompanied by additional burdens like body-shame, teasing, unwanted male attention etc. In every age vulnerable girls look to their social circle (and, more recently, the internet) for clues to make sense of their distress, and every age has its own specific answer to offer. In one place at one time it might have been repressed trauma caused by forgotten sexual abuse in childhood. In another place at another time girls might be taught to fixate on their weight as the source of their misery. Today, all over the Western world, the standard explanation, eagerly pushed by activists (#2) as well as friends, teachers, therapists, online influencers, children’s books, the mainstream media, public institutions etc. is “you’re born in the wrong body and need to be fixed”.

2. The Social Justice aspect

Of course the trans craze has not arisen in a vacuum, but can only be properly understood in the light of wider intellectual and ideological trends whether you prefer to call it “Critical Social Justice” ideology, “wokeism”, “applied postmodernism”, “identity politics”, “the identity synthesis”, or something else entirely. This movement – which traces its ideological roots back to the French postmodernists of the 1960s and 70s, but has mutated into its current form in elite American colleges and universities – understands society in terms of zero-sum power struggles between privileged (oppressors) and marginalized (oppressed) identity groups (races, genders, sexual orientations etc.). According to the prevailing theory of intersectionality your place in the power hierarchy is entirely determined by the various identity categories you happen to fall into. If your intersecting identities put you in the ”privileged” box, you are considered an oppressor by virtue of existing (regardless of your actions, and regardless of the actual circumstances of your life), which means everybody else has a permanent blank check to attack you in the name of ”punching up”, and you don’t have a right to stand up for yourself.

While Critical Race Theory (the lens through which matters of race and ethnicity are analyzed) does not allow you to “identify out of” your whiteness (and hence your responsibility for systemic racism), Queer Theory (the lens through which matters of gender and sexual orientation are analyzed) does allow you to identify out of your “gender” which has, for all intents and purposes, replaced biological sex as a category in woke orthodoxy. Hence, if you’re a straight, white, able-bodied (etc.) kid, pretty much your only way to earn any “oppression points”, and avoid ending up as a permanent punching bag, is to adopt a marginalized gender identity or some kind of mental health diagnosis (another “identity” that has shot through the roof!) or both.

3. The Homosexual Link

Perhaps the saddest irony of the current crusade to medically “correct” young people’s bodies with puberty-blockers, hormone therapy, surgery etc. is that a disproportionately large percentage of them would otherwise almost certainly grow up as gay. Same-sex attracted individuals were often highly gender-nonconforming as children. Especially in a culture in which stereotypically “feminine” or “girly” behavior in boys is still frequently frowned upon [2], it is easy to understand how a sensitive, “proto-gay” boy might come to think he was “meant” to be a girl. But even for girls the pressure to be stereotypically “feminine” seems to have gotten worse rather than better in recent decades, so it’s hardly surprising that many of the more “tomboyish” girls, previously likely to grow up as butch lesbians, come to the conclusion that it would be easier to live as a boy.

Of course it doesn’t help that practically every organization that used to fight for the rights and interests of same-sex attracted people has turned 180° (#2) and no longer even recognizes biological sex – let alone “same-sex attraction” – as a thing. Only “same gender attraction” is still recognized. According to this redefinition, e.g. a “lesbian” is a person of any sex who identifies as a “woman” while being attracted to other people (once again, of any sex) who identify as “women”. To be exclusively attracted to one’s own biological sex (i.e. exactly what it used to mean to be “gay” or “lesbian”) is now actively condemned as bigotry [3], all in the name of “LGBTQ+” rights and interests!

4. The Autism Link

Another group that is greatly over-represented among the young people currently lining up for “gender-affirming” medical treatment are kids on the autism spectrum. These kids often struggle with social awkwardness as well as feelings of being different and not fitting in with their peers, which, in the current climate, can only too easily be reinterpreted as symptoms of gender dysphoria (#1). People on the autism spectrum also tend to gravitate toward rigid, black and white thinking (girls are into dolls and pink dresses, boys are into cars and blue jeans etc.) and are therefore especially vulnerable to the idea that not fitting the prevailing gender stereotypes is a sure sign of being born in the wrong body.

5. The Sexual Abuse Link

A disproportionally large percentage of the young people seeking out “gender-affirming care” have a history of sexual abuse. It’s easy to see how victims of such abuse can come to see their bodies as forever “tainted” by the experience, which must make the idea of “starting over” in a new body (even as a new person!) seem only too appealing. An abused girl may come to see her femaleness as the source of her victimization. From there it’s a just short step to wanting to escape femaleness altogether. Male victims, on the other hand, may see their abuse at the hands of another male as incompatible with “masculinity”. There are also male victims who decide they have to be girls, because the idea of belonging to the same sex as their abuser is just too intolerable.

6. The Porn Link

Even from an early age children can hardly avoid being exposed to vast amounts of increasingly violent and misogynistic online pornography [4] in which women are being choked, slapped, spat in the face etc. for the gratification of men [5]. A certain kind (#7) of trans-identified males (whom the children are taught never to question, criticize, or disagree with for any reason – only a hateful, intolerant bigot could possibly do such a thing, remember!) frequently portray being used as an object for the gratification of men as an inherent part of what it means to be a “woman”. E.g. trans-identified “Andrea” Long Chu famously summed up “femaleness” distilled to “its barest essentials” as “an open mouth, an expectant asshole, blank, blank eyes”. No wonder many girls decide that “if that’s what it means to be a woman, then count me out!”. Come to think of it, if treating women like that is part of what it means to be a “man”, you can probably count a lot of males (myself included!) out as well (#9).

Other males get stuck in an escalating spiral in which they require increasingly extreme stimuli to “get off”. To many trans identified males the road to castration began with an obsession with so-called “sissy-porn” [6] in which males are supposedly “emasculated” and turned into women through endless violence and humiliation.

7. The Autogynephila Link

To most well-meaning liberals and lefties, the word “trans” probably conjures up images of sensitive, “girly”, gay males, as well as “tomboyish”, “hyper-butch”, lesbian females (#3) who only want to live and let live. Who could possibly be so heartless and cruel as to deny these non-threatening, severely distressed young people some special dispensations, even if means making some concessions we probably wouldn’t have made otherwise (being a “man” or a “woman” is about “gender” rather than sex, the only way to determine a person’s “gender” is self-identification etc.)?

There is a problem, however: If you look at many of the loudest trans-identified males out there, they are neither same-sex attracted, nor particularly “effeminate” at all. Quite the contrary, in fact: The last thing these guys can be accused of is displaying too little toxic masculinity, too little aggression, not enough raging entitlement, insufficient need for dominance, or, for that matter, being too nurturing, caring, sensitive, empathetic, selfless etc. As Helen Joyce has pointed out, you cannot truly understand how we ended up in the current mess without acknowledging that there are some extremely motivated and entitled men out there who will stop at nothing to get what they want and destroy anyone who gets in their way. Their goal is unrestricted access to female-only spaces (which, of course, makes them no longer “female only”), the way to get there is self-id (i.e. saying you’re a woman obligates everybody else to treat you, and even think of you, as such for all purposes), and the Trojan horse for smuggling in self-id is to reframe it in terms of compassion towards severely distressed, gender-nonconforming children and teenagers. The thousands of young people currently subjected to experimental treatments are collateral damage.

Autogynephilia (meaning “love of oneself as a woman”) is a male fetish or paraphilia [7], more or less synonymous with what used to be known as “transvestism” or “erotic cross-dressing”. Autogynephiles are straight, often quite stereotypically masculine, men who get turned on by the idea of being their own porn-inspired (#6) jerk-off fantasies. So these are the guys who tend to identify as “lesbians” and accuse real lesbians of bigotry for not being interested in their “lady-cock” [8]. They are also behind nearly all attempts by trans-identified males to force themselves into female only spaces, and the narcissistic rage when women’s boundaries get in their way may very well be the single greatest contributor to the frequently cited “toxicity” of the debate around trans issues.

8. The Wolf in Trans Clothing

The standard response whenever gender-critical feminists bring up the safety issues of allowing biological males to self-identify into female-only spaces is “so you’re saying all trans women are rapists?”. Well, no. The point is not that all trans-identified males are rapists, but that they are precisely males, and as such they are neither more nor less likely to be rapists (or voyeurs, flashers, gropers etc. [9]) than other males. While obviously not all males – trans-identified or not – commit sexual assault, enough of them do that it’s a problem. In the absence of telepathic powers you can’t tell in advance who poses a risk and who does not [10], which means women have a legitimate interest in keeping all males out of their most intimate and vulnerable spaces.

But even if we accept, for the sake of the argument, that no true Scotsman “trans woman” is a threat, how do we tell the “true trans women” from opportunistic predators who only pretend to be trans to get access to female only spaces if the only criterion for distinguishing “trans” from “non-trans” is self-id? Considering the lengths to which male predators throughout the ages have been prepared to go (e.g. studying for years to become Catholic priests) in order to get easy access to victims, the idea that no one who isn’t trans would ever claim to be for nefarious ends is frankly absurd. Besides, we’re also told that any trans-identified male who does commit sexual assault is not really trans but a “cis” man pretending to be trans to prey on women – precisely the thing that supposedly never happens! Despite this, the perpetrator must still be allowed to serve in a women’s prison, the victim must still be forced to refer to her rapist as a “woman” (who committed rape with “her penis”), and the rape must still enter the public record as committed by a “woman”. The level of Doublethink is truly staggering!

9. Escaping Toxic Masculinity

To be fair, it is almost certainly too simplistic to split all trans-identified males into effeminate gays and autogynephiles. It is probably also fair to say that not all males with autogynephilic tendencies are raging, entitled narcissists filled with bottomless contempt for women’s boundaries. At least to a first approximation, all trans-identified males who engage in predatory behavior seem to be autogynephiles, but that doesn’t mean that all, or even most, autogynephiles engage in predatory behavior.

Especially among younger straight males, the desire to distance oneself from precisely this kind of toxic masculinity and predatory behavior seems to be a powerful motive for identifying out of manhood.

[1] Such ideas are typically found in patriarchal cultures with strict gender roles and serve to protect the purity of manhood by defining effeminate (and probably gay) men out of the male sex. Despite claims to the contrary, these men are still not considered women, and none of these cultures fail to distinguish between biological males and biological females.

[2] Suzie Green, the former leader of the trans lobbying group Mermaids is on record talking about how her son’s gender-nonconforming behavior was making her husband uncomfortable, so they took him to Thailand to have him fixed. Others have referred to this practice of converting gay boys into “straight trans girls” (or vice versa) as “trans away the gay”.

[3] Planned Parenthood Toronto famously hosted a horrendously rapey workshop on the topic of “Overcoming the Cotton Ceiling: Breaking Down Sexual Barriers for Queer Trans Women”, the “Cotton Ceiling” being an obvious reference to women’s underwear, that bothersome obstacle to “Queer Trans Women” (i.e. males) getting into lesbian women’s vaginas.

[4] Typically beginning with more seemingly “innocent” (if somewhat “edgy”) material (cartoons, manga, anime etc.) and escalating over time as the social media algorithms keep suggesting increasingly extreme content.

[5] Children are also taught by woke activists (#2) that only a hateful, intolerant, bigot could possibly see this as anything but “progressive”, “liberatory”, “sex-positive” and even “empowering” to women.

[6] The World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), whose guidelines have been adopted as authoritative by health services all over the Western world, has held up “eunuch” as a legitimate gender identity. WPATHs website also used to include a link to a sissy porn site called “The Eunuch Archives” where much of the content was tagged “minor”.

[7] Despite frequent claims that the Autogynephilia diagnosis has been “discredited” or “debunked”, many of these men openly admit the fetishistic aspect of their orientation.

[8] The parallels to “incels” couldn’t be more obvious.

[9] Of course it’s not just a matter of physical “safety”. Women (or men for that matter!) also have a legitimate interest in privacy, dignity, comfort etc.

[10] Although contempt for women’s boundaries – which is precisely what you are demonstrating by forcing your presence on women who don’t want you in their spaces – is a major red flag in itself. Even the “gender-uncritical” feminists used to know this back in the days when so many of them kept eagerly citing the “Schrödinger’s Rapist” argument.

Trump is a hero to the working class!!

Yeah right.

The New Republic has the details:

You probably missed it, because it created barely a ripple in the media, but last Friday, a federal judge appointed by Donald Trump struck down one of President Biden’s most pro-worker policies: his effort to ensure that far more Americans benefit from overtime pay. Around four million salaried workers with lower incomes are the losers in this decision, yet it generated startlingly few news stories and no outraged missives from leading columnists.

Well, look, it’s only money. Journalists and columnists focus on Higher Things.

[Biden’s] administrative rule, proposed last year, would raise the existing income threshold for many workers to qualify for extra pay for hours beyond the 40-hour week under the Fair Labor Standards Act. Right now, that threshold is only around $35,000 per year. The rule would raise it to around $58,000.

Around four million additional people would qualify for overtime protections under this change. These are people who make more than $35,000 but less than $58,000 per year, but don’t currently qualify for overtime; to oversimplify, bosses have reclassified many of these workers as managers, exempting them from federal overtime protections.

The Biden rule would make them eligible: According to Labor Department spokesman Jesse Lawder, this group includes hundreds of thousands of people who do many types of manufacturing work as well as those holding low-to-medium-level positions in everything from retail and fast-food franchises to construction.

Well…ok…but let’s face it, that’s boring. It’s not sexy and enthralling like Trans Rights Melodrama, it’s just a little bit of money. There’s more to life than a little bit of money; don’t you know that?

Guess who managed to block this rule that would have provided those people with relief? MAGA Republicans allied with business interests, that’s who.

The lawsuit that succeeded combined two suits—one launched by Trumpy Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, the other by a consortium of business groups. While the business coalition appears broad, it includes big players. We’re talking about the National Federation of Independent Business, which gave over $500,000 to GOP candidates (and a pittance to Democrats) last cycle; the International Franchise Association, whose board includes executives from fast-food behemoths like McDonald’s; and the National Retail Federation, whose board boasts representatives from giants like Walmart and Target.

Exactly: the real salt of the earth, not like those fancy liberals with their vegetable shoes and their cars that run on coconut oil.

Again with the dishonest concealing language.

Transgender police allowed to strip-search women under new guidance

Once more slowly for those all the way at the back:

“Transgender” is not the issue; the issue is MALE. The issue is MALE police allowed to strip-search women. Saying “transgender” when you mean “male” just conceals and veils and obfuscates what is being forced on women.

Transgender police officers can strip-search women under new guidance issued by the British Transport Police (BTP).

The guidance, seen by The Telegraph, allows male staff identifying as female to intimately search women so long as they have a gender recognition certificate (GRC).

Say the “male” bit up front, in the headline and the first sentence, not after both. Stop playing their game.

The guidance says officers can search people of the same sex as “either their birth certificate or GRC” in BTP jurisdiction. 

Authorised in September by the assistant chief constable for network policing, it reads: “British Transport Police recognises the status of transgender and non-binary detainees/staff from the moment they permanently identify in that gender with or without a GRC.

“This means that even when a person has not legally changed their sex, we should continue to use the correct pronouns and recognise the person’s gender. BTP officers/staff will only search persons of the same sex as either their birth certificate or GRC.”

That’s incoherent – by “continue to use” they must mean “nevertheless use.” But hey, it’s cops, and it’s cops blathering about a ridiculous dangerous to women policy, so expecting them to blather it coherently is expecting too much.

Anyway, point is: police say hell yes men can strip-search women, as long as they get some kind of certificate at some point, when they get around to it.

Cathy Larkman, retired police superintendent and national policing lead for the Women’s Rights Network, labelled the new guidance “state-sanctioned sexual assault”.

She said: “British Transport Police think that the possession of a GRC conveys some sort of right for a male officer to strip-search a woman, or for a female officer to be pressurised into searching a male detainee.

“Their eagerness to bring this in despite the clear warnings made indicates that they have forgotten about women’s rights, or at best that these can be dispensed with. But women have human rights too.

“It is appalling that police chiefs are so intent on disregarding the law and shocking that it is left to women to hold them to account and to remind them that not so long ago, they promised to rebuild women’s trust. Those were hollow words.

“This is state-sanctioned sexual assault and police chiefs have lost their mind bringing this in. They have failed women, it is absolutely unforgivable. It cannot go on.”

Notice how clearly she says it, unlike the shameless authors of that ludicrous “guidance.”

The New Republic:

Elon Musk is so excited to start his new gig ruining the federal government that he’s getting an early start by goading his millions of followers to cyberbully government employees.

This week, Musk took aim at Ashley Thomas, the director of climate diversification for the U.S. International Finance Corporation—a highly technical role that involves developing ways of securing agriculture and infrastructure against extreme weather, one agency official told The Wall Street Journal.

Ways of doing what now? Securing agriculture and infrastructure against extreme weather?? What kind of god damn lefty crazed woke bureaucrat would want to secure agriculture and infrastructure against extreme weather??! Who the hell needs agriculture and infrastructure? Nobody but those pathetic libtards who can’t even figure out how to grow all their own food overnight.

After a right-wing troll account posted on X drawing attention to Thomas’s position, Musk reposted it, noting that there were “So many fake jobs.”

Seriously. What could be more fake than agriculture and infrastructure?

Get a piece of paper and you can strip-search women all you like.

Transgender police officers can strip-search women under new guidance issued by the British Transport Police (BTP).

The guidance, seen by The Telegraph, allows male staff identifying as female to intimately search women so long as they have a gender recognition certificate (GRC).

Men get to do what they want. Women, not so much. Men get to frighten and humiliate women; women get to be frightened and humiliated.

The guidance says officers can search people of the same sex as “either their birth certificate or GRC” in BTP jurisdiction. 

Authorised in September by the assistant chief constable for network policing, it reads: “British Transport Police recognises the status of transgender and non-binary detainees/staff from the moment they permanently identify in that gender with or without a GRC.”

The cops recognize the status of transgender and non-binary detainees/staff, but they don’t recognize the status of women. If you’re fake, you’re good to go; if you’re just another goddam woman, you deserve whatever the good gendery people do to you.

Cathy Larkman, retired police superintendent and national policing lead for the Women’s Rights Network, labelled the new guidance “state-sanctioned sexual assault”.

She said: “British Transport Police think that the possession of a GRC conveys some sort of right for a male officer to strip-search a woman, or for a female officer to be pressurised into searching a male detainee.

“Their eagerness to bring this in despite the clear warnings made indicates that they have forgotten about women’s rights, or at best that these can be dispensed with. But women have human rights too.”

They haven’t forgotten about women’s rights. This isn’t being done by accident or unconsciously. This is a deliberate calculated campaign to demolish women’s rights. All of them.

“It is appalling that police chiefs are so intent on disregarding the law and shocking that it is left to women to hold them to account and to remind them that not so long ago, they promised to rebuild women’s trust. Those were hollow words.

“This is state-sanctioned sexual assault and police chiefs have lost their mind bringing this in. They have failed women, it is absolutely unforgivable. It cannot go on.”

And yet it will.

It’s Trans Day of Remembrance again? Still? Always?

A Scottish council has been accused by JK Rowling of honouring the death of a notoriously violent transgender prisoner by flying a flag above its headquarters.

Edinburgh City Council flew the pink, blue and white-striped flag above the city chambers on Wednesday to mark Transgender Day of Remembrance.

Why? Why did Edinburgh City Council do that? Does it fly a flag for a Day of Remembrance for all the sets of people who are neglected or oppressed or abused or exploited before it bothers with people who have luxury fantasy identities?

In a message posted on X, formerly Twitter, the local authority said it was a “day to remember people who have lost their lives in acts of transgender violence”.

What people? There aren’t any. Trans people are one of the safer demographics. The local authority should talk to a woman now and then.

Feminist campaigners said the only Scot included in the official list of those being commemorated was Tiffany Scott, who was one of the UK’s most violent inmates before [his] death earlier this year.

Scott, who was previously known as Andrew Burns, had been convicted of a string of offences, including stalking a 13-year-old girl from behind bars by sending letters.

The criminal came out as transgender in 2016 but is understood never to have begun any physical transitioning nor to have possessed a gender recognition certificate.

And he was in no way a victim of violence against trans people. One, he was a perp himself, and two, he was not a victim of violence.

Questions were also raised about Scott’s inclusion on an international list of people being commemorated for TDOR as there had been no suggestion that the criminal’s death was linked to transphobia.

For Women Scotland (FWS), a feminist campaign group that led opposition to Nicola Sturgeon’s self-ID gender reforms, posted: “So Edinburgh City Council flew a flag for this violent man? Who made that decision?”

Marion Calder, a FWS director, said: “It’s absolutely ridiculous for Edinburgh Council to raise this flag. It’s virtue signalling for one of the most dangerous prisoners that Scotland has ever had.”

Hey now, he called himself Tiffany. Isn’t that enough??

When Scott died earlier this year, [he] was serving an indefinite sentence under an order for lifelong restriction and had been described as one of the most “menacing people” in the Scottish prison system. Scott had been deemed an “unmanageable risk to public safety” and could only ever have been released if it was decided this was no longer the case.

The convict had attacked a nurse in Cheshire in 2010 and committed a series of other offences while in custody. These included attacking a prison nurse with a chair, punching and attempting to bite prison officers, smearing excrement in a cell and ripping up “tear-proof” clothing in a suicide attempt.

A Hannibal Lecter wannabe.

Not a victim of “anti-trans” violence.

Why why WHY is this dreck being handed out in schools??? Aren’t schools supposed to be responsible about what they teach? Isn’t that a core part of their function? It’s not really education if it’s a pack of lies, is it.

Boys and men don’t have periods. Telling children they do is malpractice. Boys don’t have sore breasts or bloating. Girls who “don’t identify as” girls are girls nevertheless. Girls who don’t identify as human are human nevertheless. Girls who do identify as trees or cars or parakeets are not trees or cars or parakeets. There is no magic. Time to wake up now.

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Debunk first then mock.

I’d really like to see a peer-reviewed phylogeny of trans categories, etc.! Transgenderism isn’t a single thing, and it hasn’t been adequately studied (since doing so would be “literal violence”…). Is “gender dysphoria” affecting males and females actually two distinct phenomena with separate causes? What about age at onset, and its prevalence among homosexuals? How frequently is “transgenderism” a misdiagnosis of autism or depression, and how can we correct this? What about social contagion, parental influence, sexual fetishism? That would be an interesting and valuable study. It seems to me that at this point, “gender dysphoria” is a wastebasket_diagnosis. [Peter N. comment]

This sort of study would dismantle transgenderism altogether, undoing all the institutional capture work that the forced-teaming of the LGBTQetc “community”/Trans Umbrella has let them get away with. Examination is anathema. Even setting aside the basic dishonesty of the foundational claims that humans can a) be born into the “wrong” body, and b) change sex, any scrutiny of “gender identity” or “transness” is a threat to the entire gender confection. Not only does it whittle away the numbers of the “community” sub-demographic by sub-demographic, it dissipates the obscuring smokescreen of “transness” that is supposed to unify and solidify this congeries of disparate and irreconcilable conditions and behaviours.

Let’s look at Peter N’s research proposal questions in more detail:

Is “gender dysphoria” affecting males and females actually two distinct phenomena with separate causes? I’ve come to believe that they are. Males seem to want to break into “womanhood” and take it over. Females are trying to escape it. If they’re not the same thing, you shouldn’t call them the same thing.

What about age at onset, and its prevalence among homosexuals?

I don’t believe there are any “trans kids.” They are made, not born. I think it’s parents trying to “trans away the gay”. If that wasn’t happening, how many “trans kids” would grow out of it? My understanding is that it would be most of them. Desistance is something that trans activists should be able to explain. The same with detransitioning?

How frequently is “transgenderism” a misdiagnosis of autism or depression, and how can we correct this? Handwaving away comorbidities doesn’t solve them; transing them doesn’t treat them, or make them go away. Imposing transness on these people does not make them trans.

What about social contagion, parental influence, sexual fetishism? Each of these is a separate “gateway” into transness. Why lump them together? What does any of them have to do with the supposed “born in the wrong body” explanation? If it can be “induced”, how can it be innate?

Any one of these questions threatens to bring down the whole house of cards. But we’re not allowed to ask them. We’re not supposed to poke and prod. We’re supposed to just accept the soundness of all of this and use these ideas as a foundation upon which to base medical practice and legal structures, among other things. Who in their right mind would just take their word for it, and build anything on top of this miasmic swamp of delusional bullshit? And once cracks started to appear, who wouldn’t start looking a little more carefully at the soundness of the building site and the quality of construction?

“It seems to me that at this point, “gender dysphoria” is a wastebasket_diagnosis.”

Well, you know what they say; garbage in, garbage out.

Jill Filipovic on the fad for rapey men in power:

Yes, the #MeToo movement launched a culture- and law-changing reckoning with sexual harassment, abuse, and power, first in the U.S., then across the globe. But in recent weeks it has become clear that the movement also, perversely, seems to have empowered right-wing men to act with even more impunity than before.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in President-elect Donald Trump’s Cabinet and close staff picks, several of whom have been accused of sexual misconduct—not to mention the president himself, who has not only been credibly accused but found liable for sexual abuse in court.

Credibly accused and credibly heard – we’ve all heard him say it on the Access Hollywood tape. We’ve heard not just his “you can grab them by the pussy” but also his “I wanted to fuck her” – we’ve heard his view of women as things he gets to grab and fuck.

This appears to be the emerging conservative mentality. If everyone is a sexual predator, then no one’s history of misdeeds matters (or, at least, no one needs to be held accountable). MAGA Republicans seem to be having their own #MeToo moment, except here, a growing cohort of men is essentially saying: Oh, another man accused of sexual predation? #MeToo—and so what? Being accused of sexual harassment, abuse, or assault is no longer disqualifying; on the right, it has been normalized. It may even be an asset.

Of course it may. On the right, women=weak, inferior, second rate. Using them the way they’re supposed to be used is manly and tough. Manly and tough are good, and they can also be funny. Trump’s contemptuous chat about women is funny; he’s a funny guy…provided you’re in on the joke.

In the background of all this, reactionary conservative men are cheering the end of the anti-Trump feminist fight. The white supremacist Nick Fuentes started a social media trend when he posted what may be the tagline of this particular moment: “Your Body, My Choice. Forever.” The line is a reference to the longtime abortion rights slogan “My Body, My Choice,” but it also has an undeniably rapey ring. And that is not a coincidence: The power to legally force a woman to endure the permanent and sometimes dangerous full-body evolution of gestating a pregnancy for nine months, followed by the pain and risk of childbearing, is not so different from the power to force a woman into sex. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the same organs are generally involved; both acts force a woman to suffer a painful invasion of her most intimate body parts; both take what should be happy and pleasurable events (having a baby, sex) and turn them violent and violating; and both assume that a woman’s body may be used against her will, as a vessel for someone else’s desires—a man’s sexual ones, the state’s reproductive ones. “Your Body, My Choice” makes clear the relationship between the forced births and pregnancies of abortion bans and the forced sex of rape—and the desire for misogynistic humiliation and male dominance that underlies both.

That is what it all boils down to, of course. It’s the woman who propels the man’s genes (as well as her own) into the next generation, so she must be both policed and ploughed. Her pregnancy is his property, and so is she.

A very profound and serious point.

See also: an irregular verb in the “Yes Minister” sense.

That’s one of those irregular verbs, isn’t it. I have an independent mind, you are an eccentric, he is round the twist.

We see a lot of that these days.

Shhhhh don’t mention the maternal deaths.

Georgia officials have dissolved a committee responsible for investigating deaths of pregnant women in the state, after one or more members leaked confidential information about deaths linked to the state’s strict abortion laws.

In a letter sent to members of the Maternal Mortality Review Committee (MMRC), Georgia health commissioner Kathleen Toomey said an investigation failed to identify those responsible for the leak, so all current members would be removed.

The news – first reported by ProPublica – comes two months after the outlet published stories on the deaths of two women the panel ruled were preventable and linked to the state’s strict abortion ban.

See also: Galway University Hospital and the death of Savita Halappanavar.

Since June 2022, Georgia has prohibited all abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, when many women might not know they are pregnant, except in cases of rape, incest or when necessary to prevent “irreversible physical impairment” or death of the mother.

Amber Thurman, 28, and Candi Miller, 41, both died that same year, following rare complications involving the FDA-approved abortion medications mifepristone and misoprostol prescribed from out of state.

Thurman waited 19 hours at a Georgia hospital before doctors performed a rare procedure – prohibited by the state abortion ban with few exceptions – needed to expel fetal tissue from the uterus that had not been fully cleared by the abortion pills. By the time she was taken into surgery, Thurman had developed acute sepsis. She died on the surgery table.

Which is exactly what happened to Savita Halappanavar.

The anti-abortion fanatics, Catholic and otherwise, prefer the death of the woman and the fetus to the termination of a failed pregnancy.

ProPublica’s reporting on Thurman and Miller, published in September, drew widespread outrage especially among pro-choice activists who argue strict abortion bans put women’s lives in danger.

And why do they argue that? Because it’s true. Catholic hospitals adamantly refuse to terminate miscarriages and that does indeed put women’s lives in danger.

Committees to investigate maternal deaths exist in every state. Georgia’s now-disbanded panel featured more than 30 experts, including 10 medical doctors.

Georgia has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the US, the only industrialised country in the world where rates of infant and maternal mortality are growing.

Isn’t that just wonderful? Makes me so proud to be a Namurrican.

Every bit? Really?

I think if you look into it the answer to all those questions is no.

A guy can have a delicate girlish face. He can smile winsomely. He can have long hair that he tucks behind his ears. He can tilt his head just a little.

He’s still a guy.

This one calls himself Zooey Zephyr. He represents Missoula in the 100th district in the Montana House of Representatives. Hats off to him for courage, doing it in Montana as opposed to Vermont. Zero hats off to him for respect for women.

They just want to be their true selves.

A transgender woman has made a chilling call to violence, explicitly threatening to assassinate prominent figures including author JK Rowling and Representative Nancy Mace.

The Instagram user, who goes by @Venuspeenis, made graphic and detailed threats of murder in a disturbing video rant, targeting the Harry Potter author and Republican congresswoman.

‘I condone murder… I think we need to hold our politicians accountable by murdering them,’ they said in a series of shocking statements.

He said. He’s not two or more people, he’s just the one guy.

The user targeted JK Rowling, asking ‘Why is JK Rolling still alive?’ and calling for her to ‘burn on the stake and die.’

‘We should be focusing our efforts and our resources not on assassinating Trump but on assassinating JK Rowling – that f***** w**** needs to die, she needs to burn on the stake and die,’ they said in their since-deleted Instagram story. ‘I think we should just all come together and murder everyone,’ they added. ‘I think things would be better.’

Addressing Congresswoman Nancy Mace, the user threatened to find her in the woman’s bathroom and ‘bash her head in’ until she’s dead. ‘I hope that one day I do find you in that woman’s bathroom and I grab you by your ratty looking f******* hair and drag you face down to the floor while I repeatedly bash it in until the blood’s everywhere and your dead.’

He’s just one random lunatic, but still, the enthusiasm with which the fans of trans ideology threaten and abuse and shout at women is worth noticing.