I guess UNICEF is a terf.

Ensuring no child is excluded on the basis of gender is a priority identified in UNICEF’s new Education Strategy. To reach this goal, a commitment to strong intersectoral work is paramount. To understand what this means in practice, this blog outlines how Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) plays a significant role in girls’ access to education and could help unlock the future for millions of girls around the world.

WASH is fundamental for girls’ education

Every child – including every girl – has the right to a quality education, enshrined in the Convention on the Rights of the Child 30 years ago…

For girls, appropriate WASH facilities are a particularly important part

One of these again.

It really doesn’t take that much thought to see the problem. The authors of this harangue can’t have made any effort at all.

What about the privacy of the person – let’s say, just to pick one at random, the woman – who “feels like” the man she sees in the women’s toilet is in the wrong toilet? Why doesn’t her privacy matter at least as much as his? Why is he in the women’s toilet? Why can’t he use the men’s? Why is it her job to respect his privacy but not his job to respect hers? Why is it her job to protect him from harm when he could be there to do … Read the rest

Misleading if not just plain dishonest.

Nobody is trying to “exclude LGBTQ+ students” from sports or healthcare or education. I’m sure there are way too many religious fanatics trying to convince lesbian and gay students to go straight, and they should stop, but mass exclusion is a different matter. People who aren’t delusional are trying to exclude male students from female sports, because including them is grossly unfair to the female athletes, and endorsement of cheating by the male students.

There are people who consider “gender-affirming” surgeries and hormones not health care but tragic mutilation at the behest of a fad. The NEA should not be supporting the mutilators. … Read the rest

Astrophysics n Mai Gender Idenninny:

It was by pure chance that I wandered into a bookstore and saw Stephen Hawking’s The Grand Design on the front table. I cannot tell you what inspired me to pick up a book on cosmology. But I did, and in a few short minutes I had discovered a doorway into a new kind of physics—the kind of physics that doesn’t have all the answers, the kind of physics that disagrees with itself, the kind of physics that is messy and chaotic and, God forbid, fun. I changed my major to astrophysics the next week.

Over the following years, I learned about relativity, and how in the right circumstances time itself can slow.

The Guardian interviews Rusty Bowers, the former speaker of the Arizona house of representatives. He’s the one who refused to help Trump steal the election, and has now lost an election to a Trump attack-dog.

From the beginning, conservatism and the Republican party were interchangeable for Bowers. “Belief in God, that you should be held accountable for how you treat other people, those were very conservative thoughts and the bedrock of my politics.”

Wait. Being accountable for how you treat other people is a conservative value? I beg to differ. For one thing I think it’s a universal value, and for another thing it’s definitely a progressive or liberal or lefty value. Conservatism, at least in the US, endorses … Read the rest

Originally a comment by Me [that is, “Me” the commenter] on Gearing up.

Just some random observations: Maybe the “T” got blended with the “GLB” because some homosexual males became (for one reason or another) transwomen. The kind who would try to get picked up by straight guys, or who prostituted themselves to “straight” guys. And sometimes these straight or “straight” guys would become enraged with them and beat or kill them.

Since most women are attracted to men, and since sexual attraction isn’t a “lifestyle choice,” I know that I was perfectly able to entertain the possibility that there was a “gender” switch that these “AMAB” people had that made them at least nominally “female.” [I admit to … Read the rest

God is not optional.

Civil rights advocates are ringing alarm bells about officials distributing “In God We Trust” posters in Texas schools after a state law took effect requiring public campuses to display any donated items bearing that phrase.

“These posters demonstrate the more casual ways a state can impose religion on the public,” Sophie Ellman-Golan of Jews For Racial & Economic Justice (JFREJ) told the Guardian. “Alone, they’re a basic violation of the separation of church and state. But in the broader context, it’s hard not to see them as part of the larger Christian nationalist project.”

Christian nationalist or just plain theocratic. Jews and Muslims also have a God.

While the phrase doesn’t explicitly mention any specific

Ah yes, gearing up for Pride by expressing holy hatred of radical feminists – that’s a good look.

It’s the banner on the left – “GOD HATES TERFS” – a play on the old Westboro Baptist “GOD HATES FAGS.” So amusing. “Love in all its forms” plus hatred of feminist women.

Europe’s rivers are drying up.

In places, the Loire can now be crossed on foot; France’s longest river has never flowed so slowly. The Rhine is fast becoming impassable to barge traffic. In Italy, the Po is 2 metres lower than normal, crippling crops. Serbia is dredging the Danube.

Across Europe, drought is reducing once-mighty rivers to trickles, with potentially dramatic consequences for industry, freight, energy and food production – just as supply shortages and price rises due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine bite.

Ok but it’s only industry, freight, energy and food production. Everything else is ok.

With no significant rainfall recorded for almost two months across western, central and southern Europe and none forecast

Yet another Doctor Nightmare.

Play the clip, it’s impordant.

Just keep repeating the mantras.

Repeating the mantras.

Repeating the mantras.

Repeating the mantras.

The mayor of Boston does.

Mayor Michelle Wu on Thursday reacted to the harassment and threats being leveled at Boston Children’s Hospital, attacks which the institution says began flooding in after misinformation about its transgender health program went viral. 

It’s not all misinformation though. It’s not true that toddlers are getting hysterectomies, but it is true that girls 18 and over are getting medically unnecessary hysterectomies in order to “affirm” their “genders.”

“This is medical care,” Wu said during an appearance on GBH’s “Boston Public Radio.” “This is one of the preeminent, most renowned medical institutions in the country, doing what they do best —

But it’s definitely not a social contagion at all, definitely not.

Ollie Davies was 26 years old and at the lowest ebb of his life when he made a decision to come out as a trans woman.

Estranged from his family, he was suffering depression, anxiety and behavioural problems as well as a crisis of self-identity. He existed in what felt like a dissociative state. “I felt as if I had no free will,” Mr Davies says. “I was completely nihilistic and lonely and self-­hating and had no self-esteem. I was experiencing a total loss of identity and lack of sense of self.”

Mr Davies, who was openly ­bisexual, had never questioned his gender identity as a child or young

The Guardian wonders why on earth anyone cares.

Vic Goddard, principal of Passmores secondary academy school in Essex, has no desire to get caught up in a culture war…

“Why do politicians have an opinion on my school toilets? On our uniform policy?” he said. “Sort out the rocketing electricity bills and the cost of living. Don’t get involved in small decisions you don’t add value to.”

Because “his” school toilets and uniform policy may be discriminatory against girls. That’s why.

Goddard is referring to what many schools up and down the country describe as the apparent politicisation of an increasingly incendiary issue that they are being forced to deal with on a regular basis: gender. Everything from

Yet another group that just can’t use the word in its promotions.

Those. Those what?

Those.

Yes but those what?

Those in your community!

Those what in my community??!… Read the rest

The old sexism in grammar issue is acute in languages that have gendered “a” and “the.” French for example.

A French actress is facing a torrent of online abuse for challenging a four-century-old grammatical rule that the masculine form should take precedence over the feminine.

Typhaine D, 35, has received insults and death and rape threats over her attempt to feminise a language that she says discriminates against women. “Every sentence we speak integrates the notion that women are inferior, and that creates a terrain . . . that is favourable to violence,” she said in an interview.

Even without the violence bit, it’s true and it matters.

The pre-eminence of the masculine form dates from the 17th century

So…are men in women’s toilets and changing rooms a threat or not? Do we even know?

Police in Sheffield want to speak to this man after reports of someone filming women in a changing room in Primark on The Moor. Two women reported seeing a mobile phone being used under the curtains of the cubicles on the 19th of July. The women were left shaken and distressed. pic.twitter.com/0wxQUmtZr2

— BBC Sheffield (@BBCSheffield) August 19, 2022

This isn’t a particularly rare or obscure hobby. I’ve known men who bragged about following women up stairs in order to look up their skirts.… Read the rest

Ok enough is enough.

Remember when you had @HeinzUK Baked Beans with hash browns and thought "Why not put the baked beans IN the hash browns"?

Well, coming in September…! pic.twitter.com/QP7uU9gkNp

— Iceland Foods ❄️ (@IcelandFoods) August 19, 2022

I mean, fine, you’re in a hurry, you need to eat, you grab a can of something and make do. But don’t pretend it’s The Pride of the Nation or a Delicious Treat. Canned beans in sweet sauce are emergency food, there is no time food, when all else fails food. They are not not not “good” in the normal sense of good food. Many dishes that include beans or lentils are very good, but they don’t come in cans.

Also … Read the rest

Originally a comment by Papito on Medicine is not a tool to exalt gender identity.

I guess the word “queer” never lost its original pejorative sense, because being anti-gay and being pro-queer lead to the same result, and it’s not good for gays.

Artymorty, you’re not the only gay man I have encountered who finds “queer” to be the antagonist of “gay.” My friend S. says if a fellow says he’s “queer,” he doesn’t even want to be in the same room anymore.

I really like how Inconvenient Woman unpacked even more how Queer Theory became misogynist and homophobic theory:

I think patriarchy is extremely adaptable (which is why it’s existed for thousands of years) and every time women

Adam Rappaport at CREW on Ginni Thomas:

Ginni Thomas finds herself in the news a lot these days. Controversies surrounding the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas range from her husband’s conflicts of interest to texts she sent pushing former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows to overturn the 2020 presidential election to her roles in organizations involved in litigation before the Court.

What many people do not know is that Thomas currently is a federal government official herself. And that’s not a position she should have.

In May 2020, then-President Trump appointed Thomas to a five-year term on the Library of Congress Trust Fund Board. Created by statute in 1925, the Trust Fund Board oversees

Skip the beach for now.

Swimmers have been warned to stay away after sewage was discharged on beaches across England and Wales, predominantly in the south.

Pollution alerts have been issued to beachgoers by the Environment Agency, and on some beaches signs have been put up to warn people.

The environmental campaign group Surfers Against Sewage (SAS) has collected data that suggests storm sewage discharges have taken place in the waters of beaches in Cornwall, Cumbria, Devon, Essex, Lancashire, Lincolnshire, Northumberland and Sussex.

Oh is that all.

Hugo Tagholm, head of Surfers Against Sewage, said: “Every year we track thousands of sewage spills at some of England and Wales’s best loved beaches. Water companies are routinely using our rivers