Yes by all means err on the side of letting violent men be housed in women’s prisons instead of on the side of never doing that ever.

Transgender inmates with a history of violence against women will not be housed in female prisons in Scotland, except in “exceptional circumstances”.

Fuck “exceptional circumstances.” Just don’t do it. There are no circumstances that mean women should take the risk instead of just not housing violent men with women.

The new guidelines confirm an “individualised approach” that any transgender woman with a history of violence against women and girls, and who is assessed as presenting a risk to women and girls, will not be placed in the women’s estate.

The history … Read the rest

Katherine Rosman and Lisa Lerer in the Times:

The body of one woman had “nails and different objects in her female organs.” In another house, a person’s genitals were so mutilated that “we couldn’t identify if it was a man or a woman.”

Simcha Greinman, a volunteer who helped collect the remains of victims of the Hamas-led Oct. 7 assault on Israel, took long pauses as he spoke those words on Monday at an event at the United Nations.

One can imagine why.

Shari Mendes, a member of an Israeli military reserve unit tasked with preparing the bodies of fallen female soldiers for burial, said her team saw several who were killed on Oct. 7 “who were shot in

Decline from a not very great height.

NEW: A former aide says Donald is in cognitive decline.

How is this not a bigger story?

While on CNN’s State of the Union, Alyssa Farah Griffin, Donald’s former White House director of strategic communications, reacted to Donald’s remarks in Iowa this weekend.

“It's kind of…

— Mary L. Trump (@MaryLTrump) December 4, 2023

“It’s kind of remarkable, I’ve been watching the clips from Trump’s visit to Iowa and I’m stunned having spent a lot of time with him in 2020 and years before—he is slowing down,” Griffin said. “There’s a lack of sharpness in what he’s saying and a lack [ ] of clarity,” she continued. Griffin was once in Donald’s inner

Originally a comment by Mike Haubrich on Confused stan.

So, that’s not the actual governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz. It’s someone who “stans” him. That being said, Walz does go along with the gender woo stuff, as does the Lt Governor. He signed the bills making “affirmatiion only” treatment the law, allowing those who live in states that don’t provide transmogrifying medicine to children to travel here with a shield against prosecution to get transmogrifying medicine, and would likely sign a trans hate crime bill if it passed his desk.

But this business of “scientific consensus” is a statement that frustrates me on a forum such as X. (I don’t think we need to say “formerly known as” anymore.) … Read the rest

Hadley Freeman on Owen Jones:

Women and Jews have long shared a common experience: people telling them that what happened to them did not, in fact, happen. Denialism, in other words. People work extremely hard to see women and Jews as the privileged and never the oppressed, so they can justify their desires and prejudices to themselves.

Karenism in short. I don’t know of a karen-equivalent for Jews, although there used to be plenty of them. Karenism=working very hard to see women as privileged bitches.

It comes out in Holocaust denial, which is gaining in popularity around the world, and it came out during the Jeremy Corbyn era, when Jews who voiced their fears about antisemitism on the left

Originally a comment by Sastra on Confused stan.

“If you identify as a woman, you ARE a woman” is a “scientific consensus?” I don’t think so.

The late great Skepdoc Harriet Hall noted a common practice in pseudoscience and came up with an apt analogy and descriptive term: Tooth Fairy Science.

It’s perfectly possible for scientists to do studies on how much money the ToothFairy leaves in different countries, and whether she values front teeth more than molars or pillows more than bedside tables. Elaborate surveys measuring the satisfaction level of the children who receive a visit vs those who don’t could be sent out and results put in tables and diagrams. A substantial body of Tooth Fairy Science … Read the rest

This guy said these two things almost in the same breath.

Facts don’t care about your feelings https://t.co/ECi9GZPW5E pic.twitter.com/mxXgxTsZD4

— Walz Stan (@timwalzstan) December 5, 2023

Facts don’t care about your feelings. Ok, got it.

Very next tweet:

If you identify as a woman, you are a woman. Am I insane, or is the scientific consensus that agrees with me insane?

— Walz Stan (@timwalzstan) December 5, 2023

If you identify as a woman you are a woman. So, facts don’t care about your feelings, and if you feel you are a woman, it’s a fact that you are a woman.

What?… Read the rest

You’d think the Times would know how to report on this subject accurately.

Tory rebels seek ban on conversion therapy

Rishi Sunak is facing a fresh Commons row after a group of Tory MPs threw their weight behind a bill to ban conversion therapy.

Former senior ministers and the first openly transgender MP are among those who have co-sponsored a private member’s bill to clamp down on the practice.

Sunak backed away from the long-promised ban on attempts to change someone’s sexuality and gender identity by not including it in his King’s Speech last month.

Sexual orientation is one thing and “gender identity” is very much another. That means reporting shouldn’t talk about “conversion therapy” as if it applied to … Read the rest

Prof Francione sums it up:

So women who don't want to be in a private/intimate space with males however they identify have to take a risk because transwomen who don't want to share a private/intimate space with other males don't have to take the risk. It's amazing that some fail to see the issue here. https://t.co/5r6jeCZqfq

— Prof. Gary Francione (@garylfrancione) December 5, 2023

… Read the rest

When in doubt, put trans women first. No actually skip the “when in doubt” part – just put trans women first, no matter what.

Trans women who have hurt or threatened women or girls will not be held in female prisons unless there are “exceptional” circumstances, new guidance states.

Men shouldn’t be held in women’s prisons at all, ever. Women aren’t bits of armor for men to put on when things get violent.

The Scottish Prison Service (SPS) policy follows a public outcry after a rapist was sent to a women’s prison.

Really? A public outcry? Gosh, people are so touchy.

Under previous guidance drawn up in 2014, the prison service allowed all prisoners to be placed in facilities

National Review tells us:

Germany announced it would be freezing funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), a body specifically dedicated to Palestinian refugees, amid reports it has distributed antisemitic material, incited violence, and had alumni who participated in the October 7 atrocities in Israel.

So much for uniting nations.

Berlin has contributed nearly a billion dollars to UNRWA in the last five years, making it the single largest donor to the agency, which has come under renewed scrutiny since the Israel-Hamas war began for its record of failing to prevent foreign aid from falling into the terror group’s hands.

“UNRWA is not making a contribution to a peaceful solution,” Max Lucks of the Green

Harvard and The New Diversity:

December 3, 2023

Dear President Gay,
Since my letter to you of November 4th to which you did not reply or even acknowledge, I have received substantial feedback and input from senior members of the Harvard faculty about a number of the issues I raised in my letter concerning…

— Bill Ackman (@BillAckman) December 4, 2023

Showing more:

Dear President Gay, Since my letter to you of November 4th to which you did not reply or even acknowledge, I have received substantial feedback and input from senior members of the Harvard faculty about a number of the issues I raised in my letter concerning free speech, antisemitism, and the impact of the Office of Equity,

Jeeeezus this guy. Notice anything a little off about this “campaign photo”?

As your MP I will work for better housing infrastructure and sustainable communities. Labour built homes for heroes after the war, we can build homes for the next generation after the pandemic. #AffordableHousing #SustainableLiving pic.twitter.com/vLGA9FfUsR

— Eddie Izzard for Brighton Pavilion (@EddieIzzardLab) December 4, 2023

Ffs!!… Read the rest

Takes my breath away.

Block that puberty! Take those cross-sex hormones! What could possibly go wrong?!

They’re not just saying we can help, they’re actively pushing puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones. They’re actively encouraging people to ruin their bodies and lives.… Read the rest

Women are getting their genitals carved up to be more porny.

The increasingly popular cosmetic surgical procedure of labiaplasty is a western form of female genital mutilation (FGM), says Caroline de Costa, a professor of obstetrics and gynaecology.

…

In modern culture, “the desire for labiaplasty is predominantly based on dissatisfaction with genital appearance and not on functional complaints”, says de Costa, adjunct professor at James Cook University in Cairns, Australia, who will be speaking at a Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI) alumnae event in Dublin this week. Yet, relatively little is known about variations in the appearance of the labia, so what is perceived as “normal” is influenced by what somebody sees in idealised photographs in

Pattern detection.

Sorry, but as a pledge, this is pathetic.
*If I am elected as an MP I will do the bare minimum to meet the responsibilities of the post*

Well, thanks ever so.

This is tin eared @eddieizzard https://t.co/eF4biwwCvr

— Jon Pike (@runthinkwrite) December 3, 2023

Yes but he’ll do it in lipstick.

Here's another 'Gosh, well, we're so grateful and honoured!' tweet from Eddie Izzard. It's a feature, not a bug.
There's a lot of reasons to oppose his nomination but this condescension, this *noblesse oblige* nonsense is striking. https://t.co/k90Ixaof2A

— Jon Pike (@runthinkwrite) December 3, 2023

Gosh, no, everyone thought you’d just put in a few token hours, bro.

He just can't stop himself. Here's another with

Man brags that he won’t let women keep him from cheating women.

As soon as I put in a 180 – the highest score possible with three darts – shortly followed by the 110-close that I practice daily, the match was called.

I had just become the first transgender person to win the New Zealand Women’s Open in July 2022 – and I was elated.

But much more to the point, he had just become the first man to win the New Zealand Women’s Open. It doesn’t sound quite so fabulous put that way, does it. He was elated at his success in cheating a woman out of winning the NZ Women’s Open; go him.

Unfortunately, immediately after my

Originally a comment by Artymorty on The dream has curdled.

If we’re being charitable, we can look at the The American Dream as a symbol of the moral system that America embodied for two centuries: a dignity culture: “opportunity for each according to ability or achievement.”

Sociologists have argued that societies tend to develop from honour cultures to dignity cultures to victimhood cultures as the role of government grows.

The US started out with little centralized, organized authority to keep the peace. Conflicts had to be resolved personally, so blood feuds and duels became commonplace, and honour was the moral currency of the time.

At the turn of the 19th Century following the establishment of the U.S. Constitution, … Read the rest

A news items from a couple of weeks ago:

The University of Alberta has fired Samantha Pearson, the director of the Sexual Assault Centre, after she signed an open letter penned by ousted Ontario MPP Sarah Jama that calls into question whether Israeli women were subjected to rape and sexual violence during a Hamas attack on Oct. 7.

If you’re the director of a sexual assault center your job is not to be skeptical of particular rapes and acts of sexual violence based on your political views.

Jama, an Independent MPP from Hamilton, Ont., was the letter’s first signatory. She was booted from the NDP caucus last month after making controversial comments in support of Palestinians.

Pearson signed the

Originally a comment by Rob on He channels their diffuse anger.

For years, decades really, the American Dream has been dead. For people born in America anyway. But politicians, pundits, and commentators have banged on about it regardless – I suspect mostly because if they admit that the Dream is over they would have to construct some other meaningful framework to hold this vast and disparate society together. As the Dream dies, so does the concept of American exceptionalism. Sure, America is still exceptional, but it is no longer singularly so. It is no longer the top dog in every field of endeavour and is unlikely to be so again. Arguably it never was, and where it was, that … Read the rest