Sorry! Internet was down this morning and I ran away from home for several hours. Normal service to resume.

Welp. The end may be in sight at last.

The main justification for “gender-affirming care” for minors in the United States has been that “all major U.S. medical associations” support it. Critics of this supposed consensus have argued that it is not grounded in high-quality research or decades of honest and robust deliberation among clinicians with different viewpoints and experiences. Instead, it is the result of a small number of ideologically driven doctor-association members in LGBT-focused committees, who exploit their colleagues’ trust. Physicians presenting different viewpoints are silenced or kept away from decision-making circles, ensuring the appearance of unanimity.

So doctors get the same kind of bullying and silencing we civilians do. How interesting (and horrifying).

As the U.K.’s Cass Review pointed out, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) and the U.S. Endocrine Society were especially important in forging this consensus, and they did so by citing each other’s statements, rather than conducting a scientific appraisal of the evidence.

I’ll quote you if you quote me, and you can quote me because I will quote you. It will all go perfectly.

But the U.S. consensus now appears to have its first big fracture. In July, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, a major medical association representing 11,000 members and over 90 percent of the field in the U.S. and Canada, told me that it “has not endorsed any organization’s practice recommendations for the treatment of adolescents with gender dysphoria.” ASPS acknowledged that there is “considerable uncertainty as to the long-term efficacy for the use of chest and genital surgical interventions” and that “the existing evidence base is viewed as low quality/low certainty.”  

…

Sheila Nazarian, a plastic surgeon who practices in Beverly Hills, California, told me that colleagues in her field are increasingly expressing concern about the use of hormones and surgeries to help minors who experience distress associated with their sex. Many, however, fear that voicing these concerns will bring professional and social blowback. “It’s a real problem when colleagues are afraid to debate any medical treatment or procedure, and especially when minors are the patients,” Nazarian says. “I have been following the international debate on youth gender medicine for some time now and know we [in the U.S.] are far behind in recognizing the lack of evidence for long-term benefits, something that our European colleagues have done.”

So it turns out that doctors work pretty much the same way the frothing lunatics at Pharyngula do – they keep each other in line via shouting and bullying, with the result that nobody thinks but everybody shouts and bullies.

One obstacle to having productive discussions, Nazarian said, is the partisan divide over youth gender medicine, which leads physicians to believe that disagreement with the “gender-affirming” approach is driven by political or ideological considerations. This perception is understandable, given that the debate is in fact polarized along partisan lines, though it has become less so in the last two years as a number of Democrats in state legislatures have voted in favor of (or abstained from voting against) age restriction laws. It’s possible that advocates of “gender-affirming” interventions see benefit in the partisan framing, as it may deter liberal doctors from examining the issue in greater depth and speaking up when they detect problems.

Why yes, it may, and that’s why the partisans frame it that way.

The U.S. is one of the few Western countries where minors can receive gender surgeries, according to a new report. Teens under 18 cannot undergo double mastectomy in Belgium, Finland, Germany, Luxemburg, Sweden, the U.K., and three Canadian provinces. Countries that allow these procedures typically do so only in “rare cases,” after age 16, and with parental consent. In the U.S., WPATH Standards of Care, Version 8, widely followed and endorsed by the Biden administration, specifies no age minimums for gender surgeries, with the exception of phalloplasty (but even that can be performed if “significant, compelling reasons” exist to do so). In June, unsealed court documents revealed that WPATH eliminated age minimums for political reasons, and under pressure from U.S. Assistant Secretary for Health Rachel Levine, a transgender woman.

That punchline is a horror show all by itself.

To be continued.

H/t J.A.

No listen they can explain. It’s totally feminist and free speechy to attack and lie about a feminist speaker in an attempt to get her forcibly silenced.

The University of Sydney Philosophy Department has listed Holly Lawford-Smith, Associate Professor in Political Philosophy at the University of Melbourne, as one of its speakers in its Semester 2 seminar series. The casual seminar format is open to all, and features interstate and international academics on a weekly basis. 

Lawford-Smith, who labels herself a “gender critical feminist”, also known as trans-exclusionary radical feminism (TERFism), has been previously called out for her transphobic views and posts on social media. 

“Called out” by whom you may wonder, but that’s none of your business, because “calling out” is a sacred ceremony that cannot be viewed or questioned by heathen outsiders like you.

Also we’re the ones who get to label people, not you and not the people. She can say she’s a gender critical feminist all she wants but we know for a fact that she’s actually a trans-exclusionary radical feminist which is a terf which is a witch who needs to be burned.

This includes Lawford-Smith referring to transgender women as “trans-identified men” or “men who identify as women”

Which should be a crime punishable by the death penalty. Transgender women are men who are women. Saying anything else is worse than murder by torture.

When contacted for comment, organiser of the lecture series and Associate Lecturer of Philosophy Ryan Cox redirected Honi Soit towards Chair of Philosophy Department and Professor Kristie Miller.

…

Miller explains the department’s decision, “Lawford-Smith is a well respected political philosopher with views on a wide range of matters. The department of philosophy supports academic freedom to explore issue of moral, political, social, and other import, even when these may be difficult or controversial. The department is looking forward to hearing Holly’s thoughts about feminist philosophy and its connection to political action.” [sic]

That “sic” is pathetic. There are no grammar or spelling mistakes, so the sic is meant to imply that the whole quoted passage is a mistake. No YOU are.

SRC Women’s Officers Rand and Eliza Crossley explained, “This University prides itself on its diversity and inclusivity, however, including a known trans-exclusionary radical feminist (TERF) in a lecture series contradicts this entirely, by platforming harmful ideas that directly deny the identity of many students.” 

No, stupid children, it does no such thing. It’s not “exclusionary” to say that men are not women any more than it’s “exclusionary” to say that lions are not butterflies or universities are not bottle factories or students are not daffodils. It’s not “exclusionary” to know what things are. It’s not “exclusionary” to define things accurately. It’s necessary for our functioning to know what things are and what they’re not. We’re allowed to do that. Women are especially allowed to do that in the case of men, because there are situations in which women need to avoid men, for our own safety or equality or both.

And it’s nobody’s job to worry about the “identity” of students, especially when what’s meant by “identity” is actually fantasy. It’s certainly no academic’s job to pretend a student’s fantasy about the self is reality. The people who’ve been telling you it is are horribly and drastically wrong, and they’ve ruined your ability to think.

Silence the woman! Silence her we say!!

More from Oliver Brown on the raging trash fire of the Olympics:

The very notion of these fighters competing in Paris as women seemed indefensible. Not least when footage from 2022 surfaced of one of them, Algeria’s Imane Khelif, hitting a Mexican opponent so hard that the beaten Brianda Tamara reflected: “I don’t think I had ever felt like that in my 13 years as a boxer, nor in my sparring with men.” Surely the IOC would intervene before the first scheduled bouts for Khelif and Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting? Surely it was unconscionable to permit boxers deemed ineligible for last year’s world championship due to tests revealing XY chromosomes, the male pattern, into combat with women?

Because this is boxing you see. It’s not only that the women will lose, it’s that it’s dangerous. It’s not dangerous just in the normal way of serious sport – you could fall or crash into each other or take a puck to the face, all by accident – but in the not so normal way that hitting each other as hard as possible is the goal. In other sports you’re not supposed to hit on purpose; in boxing you are. Boxing of all sports should be the most adamant about not letting men pretend to be women so that they can bash women free of reproach.

To Bach and his IOC acolytes, in hock to a belief that your sex is whatever you say it is, womanhood can be determined by passport status. Except athletes do not compete at the Olympics using legal documents or self-declared gender identities. They compete using their bodies, with their capabilities governed by the immutable laws of human biology. 

And when they compete in boxing they compete using their fists to punch. Not their legs to run, their feet to kick a ball, their arms to pull the string on a bow, but their fists to punch.

The major sports are all controlled here by federations that have seen sense, prioritising fairness by ring-fencing the female category for biological women. Athletics acted in response to seeing three athletes with differences in sexual development on the women’s 800 metres podium at Rio 2016. Swimming understood it had a problem when Lia Thomas went from being the 554th-ranked male in the United States to winning a national collegiate title as a female. Cycling was forced to draw a line when Austin Killips, a post-puberty male, won a UCI stage race for women. But boxing, the most perilous sport at the Olympics, has been left at the mercy of the IOC, the most ideologically captured body of all.

It saw no issue in sending Angela Carini into the ring to face Khelif, only for the Italian to be dismantled inside 46 seconds by punches so hard she said she feared for her life. It was not just because it disputed the IBA’s findings, but because it believed the Algerian should never have been tested at all. Its much-vaunted eligibility “framework” is rights-led rather than scientific. This means, in essence, that it is prepared to ignore anything to do with Khelif’s chromosomes. All that matters is being perceived not to discriminate.

But of course to discriminate can be crucial. It’s not always an invidious word. It became a kind of euphemism for racism in the US during the Civil Rights movement, but in fact we discriminate all the time, because it’s absolutely necessary. You want to discriminate between flour and insecticide, for example. Sport absolutely needs to discriminate between women and men, and that goes double for the Olympics.

It is worth studying the precise details of the IBA letter describing the tests carried out on the boxers. Summarising the results as “abnormal”, it declares: “Chromosome analysis reveals male karyotype.” It also includes imaging, for each athlete, of an X and a Y chromosome, highlighting that the tests were conducted at a Delhi laboratory certified by the Swiss-based International Organisation for Standardisation. But still the IOC maintains that the results are “arbitary”, not worth the paper they are written on.

The only possible conclusion is that the IOC simply does not want to listen, that it is more interested in burnishing its credentials as “inclusive” than in upholding what is fair.

How did we get to a place where a certain narrow warped idea of “inclusion” takes precedence over fairness, equality, the rights of women? Just by endless repetition? Say “inclusion” enough times and boom, the door to the secret kingdom slowly creaks open?

[Bach] had been warned for six years that a story such as this could explode if the IOC did not draw clearer boundaries, but still he refused to react. Despite the IBA claiming that the fighters have been tested twice and that they are male, Bach insists there is no scientific means of discovering who is female.

Now, not before time, he has agreed to step aside next year, his credibility severely damaged by his handling of the controversy. It marks the dramatic culmination of a quite extraordinary episode. In the space of a single Games, the IOC has done nothing less than distort biological truth in a sport fraught with physical risk. In the eyes of many women, there could scarcely be a greater dereliction.

Goddam right.

Cowardly inadequate women-abandoning reporting by the NY Times:

A lawyer for Algerian boxer Imane Khelif says the gold medal-winning boxer has asked prosecutors in Paris to look into online harassment she faced during the Olympics about her gender and presence at the Games.

And they’re gonna do what? Arrest us all? Fine us? Yell at us?

The lawyer, Nabil Boudi, said in a statement on Instagram that his firm had filed a complaint with the online hate unit of the Paris prosecutor’s office. It was not immediately clear where the complaint would lead. The Associated Press reported Sunday that under French law, it would be up to prosecutors to decide if an investigation is merited and who might be at fault.

Man cheats women in boxing then tries to punish everyone who objects. How impressive.

The flap stoked discord among sports fans and advocates surrounding extremely touchy topics of inclusion, fairness and the complex biology of sex. Numerous people online criticized Khelif with incorrect assertions. Boudi called the chatter a “misogynistic, racist and sexist campaign.”

“This unfair harassment suffered by the boxing champion will remain the biggest stain of these Olympic Games,” he said.

Khelif, who won her gold medal bout Friday, will conclude her Games as one of Algeria’s two flag bearers at Sunday’s closing ceremony.

Blah blah blah. The Times never got around to saying a single word about the injustice to women, let alone the danger to them.

A team Trump insult a few days ago:

Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung rushed to defend JD Vance for bizarrely storming Air Force 2 to unsuccessfully confront Kamala Harris Wednesday evening with an unsavory comment regarding the smell of the plane.

Unclear. Vance weirdly tried to confront Harris; Cheung made the unsavory comment.

He hasn’t taken it down; it’s still proudly sitting there, alongside a lot of other trash.

Harris is the first vice president of Indian and Black heritage, and has gained a reputation as a foodie through her series Cooking with Kamala. 

Oh, is that the problem? Her idea of good food is not a truckload of McDonalds burgers?

H/t Tim

In the least surprising news of all time, the AP hints that Trump calls Harris a bitch in private. You don’t say! I’m pretty confident he calls her worse than that.

Former President Donald Trump reportedly has used a slur often targeted at women to describe Vice President Kamala Harris during at least two private conversations. His campaign denies it.

The New York Times cited two people who, on different occasions, heard Trump call Harris a “b——.” The people were granted anonymity to describe private discussions.

In response, Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said, “That is not language President Trump has used to describe Kamala and it’s not how the campaign would characterize her.”

Check it out. He is “President Trump”; she is “Kamala.”

Another ratchet. Now he’s trying to sue people for noticing that he’s not a woman.

Who is this idiot and how does she get anyone to publish her idiotic drivel?

[Imane] Khelif’s crime – in the eyes and relentless social media feeds of the “let us tell you how women should look, act, reproduce, breathe and exist on this earth” brigade – lies in choosing not to portray herself as an aspirational Sports Illustrated swimsuit model when her job as a professional athlete is, literally, to punch other people in the face.

Could not be more wrong.

The reality is that it’s Imane Khelif and his enablers who are shitting on every single female athlete at the Olympics. Yes, Khelif is a boxer, and his job at the Olympics is to box, but it’s not to box with women. If you can’t make your case without stupid blatant lies then your case must not be much good.

There’s an online community of “transvestigators” who spend their days with Adobe Photoshop filters and an alarmingly fragile sense of personal identity determining every prominent woman who takes her work seriously must secretly be a man, lest the confections of gender that they cling to collapse in the face of, um, concrete evidence to the contrary.

Liar. It’s the other way around. It’s the people who pretend men can be women who are relentlessly stealing women’s achievements and handing them over to men. People like you, you trendy dishonest rat.

Don’t be fooled by their rhetoric into thinking that Khelif terrifies because of her height or strength. It’s taking the sport of boxing seriously enough to pop her opponent’s nose rather than flailing about like a hapless doily in a boxer costume that’s the issue.

Oh dear god – can it get any more disgusting? She’s rejoicing in the fact that Khelif hit a woman’s nose so hard that she withdrew from the match for her own safety. He didn’t “pop her” in the nose, he punched her in the nose with the force of a man, because he’s a man.

Beneath contempt. Her name is Van Badham, in case you want to avoid her in future.

Oliver Brown doesn’t mince words:

The smouldering scandal of these Paris Games has reached the most explosive possible conclusion, with a biologically male boxer winning an Olympic gold medal as a female. Imane Khelif, the 25-year-old Algerian whose DNA tests have shown the male pattern of XY chromosomes, has swept all the way to the women’s welterweight title after dismantling four successive opponents in four utterly one-sided contests. The outcome of which the International Olympic Committee had for so long been warned – that an overwhelming focus on inclusion could remove fair sport for women – has finally come to pass.

And it’s not even “inclusion” given that women are excluded from winning in their own damn sport.

It has been the starkest illustration of a failure of governance at the highest level of global sport. By allowing biological males to fight as women through pure self-ID, the IOC have caused irreparable damage to their claims of protecting the sanctity and integrity of the female category. Khelif celebrated extravagantly by dancing on the spot as the unanimous decision was announced, before being swept out of the ring on the shoulders of the Algerian support staff.

We’re left with a sullen bitter alienated rage at the system-wide indifference to women.

For one night only, the Bois de Boulogne might as well have been downtown Algiers. Khelif’s compatriots had carpeted every tier of Court Philippe-Chatrier with their national flag, all to express solidarity with a boxer they believed had been unfairly traduced. The atmosphere was so highly charged that where Yang Liu was roundly booed when introduced, Khelif received the type of rapturous reception normally accorded a pop star. “Imane, Imane,” they chanted until the building shook.

The woman Khelif was about to punch and steal a gold medal from was booed when she was introduced. Because what, it’s unfair to be an actual woman competing in women’s boxing?

The fight assumed a now-familiar pattern, with Khelif peppering Yang courtesy of a clear advantage in reach and punching power. Outclassed in the first, Yang staggered back under the force of one juddering blow in the second and could do nothing in the third to claw back in the deficit. Khelif could afford to showboat, raising her fists in salute, knowing the gold had been grasped. How astonishing that it should ever have come to this.

Khelif was jubilant atop the medal rostrum, barely able to conceal the emotion as the Algerian national anthem played. The crowd, almost uniformly in support, sang in unison. But the strength of goodwill inside this arena scarcely hinted at the backlash this story has unleashed beyond.

Backlash and profound bitterness.

It is 11 days since the IOC were first alerted to how fast and loose they were playing with women’s safety by allowing male advantage – the increased shoulder strength, the larger biceps, the 162 per cent difference in punching force – to play out in a sport of such intrinsic danger. And still they have allowed Khelif to march unimpeded to the ultimate prize.

They’re happy with both the unfairness and the danger.

Bach, who has argued that passport status should be taken as evidence of womanhood, said: “This is not as easy as some in this cultural war may now want to portray it. If somebody is presenting us with a scientifically solid system on how to identify men and women, we will be the first ones to do it. We do not like this uncertainty. What is not possible is someone saying, ‘This is not a woman’ just by looking at somebody, or by falling prey to a defamation campaign by a not-credible organisation with highly political interests.”

So a passport is rock solid but knowing a man when we see one is not possible.

Bitter bitter herbs.

“Oh right it was that other black guy. You know, the other one.”

World’s only other Black guy steps up:

Former Los Angeles city councilman and California state Sen. Nate Holden said Friday that he was with former President Donald Trump in the helicopter ride that made an emergency landing, despite Trump saying it was former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown.

“Willie is the short Black guy living in San Francisco,” Holden said in an interview with Politico late Friday. “I’m a tall Black guy living in Los Angeles.”

It’s a damn good thing there are only three Black guys to keep track of, because more would be just impossible.

Trump told reporters gathered at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Thursday that he was involved in a helicopter emergency landing with Brown, who has since rejected Trump’s account as “obviously wrong” during a phone call with CNN. “I’ve never been in a helicopter with him in my life,” Brown said.

Thursday wasn’t the first time Trump referenced the incident as something he’d experienced with Brown. In a book, “Letters to Trump,” the former president recalled the event as “a little scary for both of us.” Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung pointed that out on Saturday in a post on X.

Ah right. He’s said it before, so that makes it true.

Holden said that he was in touch with Trump’s team in the 1990s as Trump was trying to build on the site of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, in the district that Holden represented at the time, according to Politico.

Holden recalled meeting with Trump at Trump Tower before departing for Atlantic City, New Jersey, where they were planning to tour Trump’s since-closed Taj Mahal casino. Also aboard was Barbara Res, Trump’s former executive vice president of construction, who told Politico that the man on the helicopter was definitely Holden.

Res recounted the experience in her book “All Alone on the 68th Floor,” where she said the helicopter landed safely in New Jersey after the pilot said they would need to make an emergency landing. She recalled Trump joking about Holden being scared on the flight, with Holden noting to Politico that it was Trump who was “scared shitless.”

That’s so Trump. And it’s not “joking”; it’s pretending to joke when actually sneering or belittling or libeling. Or all three.

Hey, a public transportation nerd! I’m a public transportation nerd too!

The headline is misleading.

This man travelled from Canada to Mexico on only public transport

It’s misleading because duh, millions of people do that every week. It turns out they meant local public transportation, i.e. city buses and the like.

William Hui has been fascinated with public transportation for as long as he can remember. So it only made sense that the 40-year-old systems engineer would challenge himself to travel from his hometown of Vancouver, British Columbia, to Tijuana, Mexico, solely on public buses and trains.

On 24 June, Mr Hui set out to do just that, taking a nine-day journey along the US Pacific coast. Mr Hui told the BBC he only had a few rules for his trip: absolutely no Greyhound buses or Amtrak trains were allowed, and walking between bus stops had to be kept to a minimum.

“At no point in this trip did I have to walk more than maybe 15 minutes from one bus stop to another,” he told the BBC on Friday. “It was just remarkable to see how the different services connected, especially in rural areas,” he added.

Now that is cool. I wouldn’t have guessed that would be the case. Connections are impressive around here: I can go way the hell out in the suburbs via buses, but then this is a huge prosperous metropolitan area full of tech people and tech money. Between here and Tijuana there are stretches where that is not the case, to put it mildly. I’m surprised and chuffed to learn that they nevertheless have good public transportation.

Hui tried to do it a few years ago but there was a big broken piece he couldn’t cross. No buses.

But earlier this year, he learned of a new, four-hour bus route that links Eureka, a city in northern California, to another city named Ukiah, about two hours north of San Francisco.

Wowza! A four hour local bus! That is fancy.

Another thing Mr Hui noted was the difference between public transport in bigger cities, like Seattle or San Francisco, and smaller rural areas, where one bus would travel several hours to link people over the span of hundreds of kilometres.

For sure. Rural areas are rural. No Google or Microsoft to provide thousands of customers.

One of my favorite buses: it has one stop on Mercer Island, a two minute walk from a gorgeous lakeside park, then a stop at Mercer Slough, a marshy grassy natural area/wildlife refuge, then into B’vue and to the transit center where all the buses fan out all over the region.

The BBC gloats over a man’s gloating over stealing a gold medal from a woman.

Imane Khelif said “attacks” over her gender eligibility gave her victory a “special taste” after she won Olympic women’s boxing gold a year after being disqualified from the World Championships.

The Algerian was banned and reported to have failed gender eligibility tests but, having been allowed to compete in Paris, beat Chinese world champion Yang Liu by unanimous decision over five rounds to win welterweight gold.

While the men roared with laughter.

Khelif said she had sent a “single message” with her gold – that her “dignity and honour is above everything else”.

“My message to the whole world is that they should to commit to Olympic principles and they should avoid bullying,” she said.

“This is a message of the Olympic values. I hope people will stop bullying and commit to the Olympic charter. We are in the Olympic to perform as athletes. I hope we will not see similar attacks in the future.”

He hopes people will “stop bullying” while he bullies women out of their own sport.

Words fail me.

Hunnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnh.

Play the clip.

Trump stacks the lies one on top of another.

San Francisco’s former mayor Willie Brown has dismissed as “fiction” Donald Trump’s story that they once endured a scary helicopter trip together. The former president said on Thursday that he and Mr Brown “went down” in a helicopter together and Mr Brown was “a little concerned”.

That’s so Trump. He wasn’t concerned, but Mr Brown was. Geddit??????

“We thought maybe this was the end,” Trump said. “We were in a helicopter… and there was an emergency landing. This was not a pleasant landing.” Mr Brown, 90, told US media he had never shared a helicopter with Trump, adding: “I don’t think I’d want to ride on the same helicopter with him”.

We can see why.

Trump, 78, appeared to be confusing Mr Brown with Jerry Brown, California’s former governor, with whom he shared a helicopter ride in 2018 to visit the aftermath of the Paradise wildfires. Gavin Newsom, the current state governor, was also on the flight. Both men told US media there was no emergency landing or danger. “I call complete BS,” Mr Newsom told The New York Times.

Trump told his story [lies] in response to a question about Willie Brown’s relationship with Kamala Harris, 59, in the mid-1990s while she was a California prosecutor. Trump was asked whether he thought the relationship played a role in Ms Harris’s career journey. “Well, I know Willie Brown very well,” Trump said, before speaking of the flight and claiming the former mayor had told him “terrible things” about Ms Harris. “He had a big part in what happened with Kamala,” Trump said.

The former mayor also denied this. “That’s so far-fetched, it’s unbelievable,” he told local TV station KRON. “I could not envision thinking of Kamala Harris in any negative way. She’s a good friend a long time ago, absolutely beautiful woman, smart as all hell, very successful, electorally speaking. He was doing what Donald does best, his creative fiction.”

Aka his malicious misogynist racist lying.

The man is a scumbag.

Human Rights Watch has nothing but contempt for women’s rights. I guess to them “human” just means “male.”

Let men punch women and take all their prizes, eh? Women don’t matter.

Adults tell twerps we’re not going to invent new categories of sex/gender idenniny just for twerps:

BAFTA has dealt a blow to nonbinary performers, deciding – after spending two years debating the thorny question of ‘gendered’ acting categories – that awards nominees will have to pick a side and choose whether they want to compete as ‘actors’ or ‘actresses‘. 

There are no “nonbinary performers”; there are only twerps who call themselves “nonbinary.”

The announcement places non-binary performers – like Emma Corrin, Emma D’Arcy and Bella Ramsey – in a tricky position. 

If they’re so non-binary why are they called Emma and Emma and Bella? Also why can’t the Mail decide whether there’s a hyphen in non-binary or not?

Check out the glam shot of “nonbinary” Emma Corrin in a tiny leotard and high heels. She looks pretty god damn binary to me.

Last year there was outrage after the Best British Artist shortlist was all-male.

Outrage from whom? How did anyone know the list was all-male?

The debate over gender neutral categories has proved to be a controversial one in recent years.

The Crown star Emma – who uses they/them pronouns – previously claimed that awards ceremonies aren’t ‘inclusive enough’ and said change would enable everyone to feel ‘acknowledged and represented.’

Actually no. More the opposite. The point here is to lavish extra attention on the small cohort of people vain and greedy enough to call themselves “nonbinary” and demand special treatment on those grounds.

Speaking to the BBC’s Today Programme about the possibility of gender neutral categories at major awards shows, Emma said: ‘I hope for a future in which that happens. I don’t think the categories are inclusive enough at the moment. It’s about everyone being able to feel acknowledged and represented.’

Emma added that more representation was needed within roles in the entertainment industry to encourage ‘more of an urgency’ around addressing the subject. They asked: ‘When it comes to categories, do we need to make it specific as to whether you’re being nominated for a female role or a male role?’

Yes, because otherwise women won’t get nominated at all.

This stupid brat grew up in a culture where women do manage to get some awards thanks to years of feminists pointing out that women exist too, so she takes it so much for granted that she wants to throw it out. She has no fucking clue.

Emma has identified as non-binary publicly since 2021, and has shared their journey with their gender identity publicly on social media.

The thespian told The Today Programme: ‘Your gender identity is so much to do with how you feel and it ties into so much of how you want to be seen or are seen by people and that can be very triggering or can make you uncomfortable if you don’t feel you are being seen honestly or correctly. I think that it was necessary for me to be open and honest about it because otherwise I would have felt I was being perceived wrongly.’

And we can’t have the thespian being perceived wrongly, now can we. Everyone on the planet is thinking about her all the time, so we have to get it right. She’s just that important. No really: she is.

The Telegraph:

Sharron Davies raised fears of a woman Olympian being killed as she joined fairness for sport campaigners in demanding sex tests for all competitors. The former silver-medallist swimmer said the “insane” gender row engulfing boxing at these Games amounts to “genuine neglect” by the IOC. 

Genuine, knowing, calculated, brutal, murderous neglect. A man’s feelings somehow matter more than a woman’s physical safety.

Davies and Fiona McAnena, of the group Sex Matters, appealed for sport not to get sidetracked by doubts over the credibility of the International Boxing Association, which carried out gender eligibility tests on Khelif and Lin in 2022 and 2023.

“In boxing, it is insane to put a male in a ring with a female and for the IOC to say the only thing that’s important to them is what is on a passport is genuine neglect,” Davies told a press conference on Thursday. “The duty of care has been thrown out the window, and my head wants to explode… We’re literally on the cusp of a female athlete potentially being killed if we’re not careful. It really is that bad.”

Which the officials must realize. I’ll never understand why it doesn’t stop them.

Reflecting on the saga which has tarnished the Games, McAnena added: “This failure can be laid at the door of the IOC, and the IOC could solve it too. It’s the IOC that set up the Paris boxing unit, and the IOC that is claiming there is no scientific consensus on how to determine who is a woman.  The same IOC insists these two boxers are women. By refusing to allow or recognise sex screening, it is the IOC that has invited public scrutiny of Khelif and Lin.”

That’s a point. “We don’t know how to determine who is a woman and these two men are definitely women.”

The campaigners claim the IOC is “wrong when it says no one wants to return to sex testing”. Surveys have shown consistently that the vast majority of female athletes want sex screening. At the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, 82 per cent of those surveyed were in favour, they point out.

“There is no confusion in this,” said Davies. “It’s very straightforward. Biological females should be protected to have their own classification of sport. That’s 51 per cent of this world’s population… And at the moment, they’ve been told they just don’t matter, and it’s heartbreaking.”

The IOC has rejected such criticism, insisting Khelif and Lin are women, despite their disqualifications from IBA events last year.

What are we to conclude? That women just don’t matter, and never will.