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Subtle Subtle

Quick question.

What. The fuck. Is this?

Where am I seeing it? On a NY Times article.… Read the rest

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Subtle Subtle
By Ophelia Benson, March 9, 2026

Quick question.

What. The fuck. Is this?

Where am I seeing it? On a NY Times article.… Read the rest

Archives
Bad Moves
Articles
Flashback
In Focus
Latest News
Letters
Notes and Comment Blog

Subtle Subtle 

Quick question.

What. The fuck. Is this?

Where am I seeing it? On a NY Times article.… Read the rest

Guest post: Or move BEYOND gender identity 

Originally a comment by Artymorty on Internal cannot be external.

When the term “gender identity” was first used, it described an individual’s knowledge of their sex as male or female.

Hmm that doesn’t seem entirely accurate to me. My understanding of the history of the term “gender identity” is that it comes from a few social-sciences branches of academia, primarily psychology (and especially its subdomain of sexology) and anthropology. And that it described a concept that was closely related to sex, but that was mostly understood to be separate from sex, though the boundaries were often hazy.

Psychologically, “gender identity” is not much different from any other cultural facet of identity: religious identity or national identity or ethnic identity, … Read the rest

“The great majority of pregnant people are women” “The great majority of pregnant people are women” 

I copied and posted this yesterday but now I can’t find it – perhaps she deleted it. Anyway. Solnit of all people.

Golly, what’s the matter with us, getting all riled up about people pretending that some men are women. We must be those tiresome bitches who always spoil the fun.… Read the rest

Internal cannot be external 

Karleen Gribble at Quillette:

When the term “gender identity” was first used, it described an individual’s knowledge of their sex as male or female. However, the meaning soon changed so that gender identity delineated an internal sense of oneself as living in the social role of a man or a woman.

That’s what it now means?

No wonder we’re in such a mess. That’s incoherent. How can you have an internal sense of yourself as living in a social role? They’re antithetical. Social is external by definition; that’s the whole point of it. Growing up is learning to separate your personal wants and whims and tantrums from the world external to you which frankly doesn’t give a shit about … Read the rest

One in a billion 

What, they tripped and fell on the wrong clip? The dog ate their homework? They had the right clip all ready to go so someone must have stolen it while they were brushing their teeth?

Fox News apologizes for showing old video of a hatless Donald Trump at a dignified transfer ceremony

We’re sorry, we were just really coked up that day.

Fox News apologized for airing old video of a hatless President Donald Trump during coverage Sunday of his attendance at the dignified transfer ceremony for U.S. soldiers killed in the Middle East war, insisting it was an honest mistake.

And yet it was an honest mistake that made Trump look less like a greedy monster selling merch at … Read the rest

Prettierna goldy baseball cap Prettierna goldy baseball cap 

Pliny is wicked.

… Read the rest
The great majority of people getting pregnant The great majority of people getting pregnant 

Rebecca Solnit ffs.

Aren’t we just silly to get all riled up about the new encyclopedia of insults to women based on trans ideology? We should smile sweetly and nod in agreement and then go bake some pies.… Read the rest

Always hovering 

This is just extraordinary.

I recommend watching it. It’s nauseating – Tom Harlow whispering into her ear for what seems like half an hour, like some kind of transphilic Svengali.

View from the other side:

Under His Eye indeed.… Read the rest

A touch of glam 

If there’s a way to get it wrong, he will find that way. If there’s a way to get it horribly wrong he’ll find that too.

Trump made a bold accessory choice while attending the dignified transfer of six U.S. service members killed in his war with Iran.

Trump, 79, stood as six coffins covered in American flags were solemnly carried from an aircraft to a waiting vehicle at Delaware’s Dover Air Force Base on Saturday afternoon. On Trump’s head sat a gold-embroidered white hat with the letters “USA” on the front, “45-47″ on one side, and the American flag on the other.

The $55 cap is available to purchase on the president’s merch website.

Well so he saw an … Read the rest

TBAS meets TGD 

A new syndrome is born.

Trans broken arm syndrome: A mixed-methods exploration of gender-related medical misattribution and invasive questioning

Gender-related medical misattribution and invasive questioning (GRMMIQ), colloquially known as “trans broken arm syndrome,” is a form of medical discrimination faced by transgender and gender diverse (TGD) patients wherein a provider incorrectly assumes that a medical condition results from a patient’s gender identity or medical transition. This phenomenon may take one of two forms: (1) the incorrect and explicit misattribution of gender identity or medical transition as being the cause of an acute complaint, or (2) invasive and unnecessary questions regarding a patient’s gender identity or gender transition status.

What I wonder is how these researchers know that the provider is … Read the rest

Guest post: Like a gift to peasants 

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Matching the instruments.

“Make Iran Great Again.”

Greatness is something that only Trump can bestow, like a gift to peasants too stupid to do things for themselves. With His Royal Touch (and the dropping of a few tons of high explosives), all will be made Good and Right, and the Iranian people will thank him and demand that he be given the Nobel Peace Prize once he finishes bombing them into gratitude.

Except in Trump’s view, no other country can be (or is ever allowed to be) as “Great” as the United States. This is the whole point behind his attempts at zero-sum trade deals; the United States (read Trump) … Read the rest

Thinly veiled misogyny 

The Green Party v Reality:

The Green Party was once, however briefly, a genuine refuge for people who believed that politics ought to be grounded in material reality: in the physical world, in measurable consequences, in science. It believed in ecosystems and feedback loops; in the hard logic of cause and effect. It understood that you cannot simply wish away inconvenient truths, whether those truths concern carbon emissions or the biological distinction between male and female human beings. That, at least, is what many of its founding members believed they had joined.

What they discovered instead is something altogether more alarming: a party leadership so in thrall to a well-funded ideological orthodoxy that it is prepared to break its

… Read the rest
Narcissist shares his story on Women’s Day 

Yes kids it’s International Women’s Day soooooooooo it’s time to talk about men!

He does. He actually does.

For International Women’s Day 2026, the Gazette has been speaking to women across the city. Here is Councillor Amy Kirkby Taylor’s contribution, in her own words.

I really wasn’t sure what I wanted to focus on here, my first thought was to focus on the barriers that women face in life, and how it feels to have them appearing in my life as I begin my transition. But this year’s Women’s Day theme is Give to Gain, and I want to return

… Read the rest
Move over, sluts 

Trans “activists” invade a women’s march on Women’s Day. Of course they do.

… Read the rest

Alarmed and distressed by questions 

I saw this

So I decided to seek information on this centre. On its home page you get enormous corporate Memphis balloon women and two headlines.

Run by women for all women.

We provide a supportive space to help all self-identifying women achieve their goals.

Got that? All women, by which they mean including the ones who are men. All self-identifying women, by which … Read the rest

Matching the instruments 

Tom Nichols explains that having a highly competent military in the hands of a highly incompetent idiot is not a good thing.

Strategy is about matching the instruments of national power—and especially military force—to the goals of national policy. The president and his team, however, have not enunciated an overarching goal for this war—or, more accurately, they have presented multiple goals and chosen among them almost randomly, depending on the day or the hour. This means that highly effective military operations are taking place in a strategic vacuum.

Worse, Donald Trump is now pointing to these missions as if the excellence with which they have been conducted somehow constitutes a strategy in itself. He appears so enthralled by the execution

… Read the rest
In wrong place 

Are they just impossibly stupid?

Starmer ‘in wrong place’ on trans rights, says Thornberry

Sir Keir Starmer has “ended up in the wrong place” on trans issues, Dame Emily Thornberry has said.

The senior Labour MP, who was Sir Keir’s shadow attorney general before the general election, claimed the party had not been “following our hearts” when it came to trans people.

So trans people=following hearts and women=not following hearts? Why would that be? Are women as a group strikingly unlovable? Or what? Please explain.

The Prime Minister’s public position on trans issues has significantly changed since he became leader of the Labour Party in 2020, backtracking last year on his previous stance that “trans women

… Read the rest
were fizzikkly SIKK 

Via Humans of Dewsbury:

A primary school teacher from Batley has caused uproar today after they refused to teach two 9 year olds who had dressed up as Harry Potter characters for World Book Day!

Ze Berry who does not use conventional pronouns and uses ‘Ze’ instead, says were [sic] physically SICK after seeing the two pupils walk into the classroom who were dressed as Harry Potter and Dobbie The Elf.

Despite parents of the children saying it was an insane overreaction, Ze Berry stood by her decision and said;

“JK Rowling is a transphobic bigot and any character she has created therefore has transphobic undertones which are not tolerated in the classroom.”

Ze Berry is a reasonablepeoplephobic bigot … Read the rest

Well, Johnny Well, Johnny 

He rates it? As one would rate a movie or a coffee shop? We’re grading these things now? Will there be tourism guides that rate the local wars for the convenience of tourists?

… Read the rest
You’ve been thinking 

Oh dear god.

Click play.

… Read the rest