… Read the restHundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters stormed the airport in the Russian city of Makhachkala in the predominantly Muslim region of Daghestan, with some shouting anti-Jewish comments at passengers arriving on a flight from Tel Aviv on October 29.
Riot police arrived at the airport after the disturbances, while the Interior Ministry office in Makhachkala said reinforcements, including National Guard units, were being sent to “ensure the safety” of arriving passengers, according to the Baza Telegram channel.
Anti-Jewish protests have broken out in several cities in the region in the face of Israel’s war with Hamas, rulers of the Palestinian-controlled Gaza Strip.
…
Late on October 29, videos and photos from the scene published by Izvestia indicated
All entries by this author
Checking the identities
Oct 29th, 2023 12:52 pm | By Ophelia BensonOn bended knee
Oct 29th, 2023 11:50 am | By Ophelia BensonIn the moments before he was to face a vote on becoming speaker of the House this week, Representative Mike Johnson posted a photograph on social media of the inscription carved into marble atop the chamber’s rostrum: “In God We Trust.”
That inscription of course should not be there.
His colleagues celebrated his candidacy by circulating an image of him on bended knee praying for divine guidance with other lawmakers on the House floor.
That’s just downright revolting. “I believe in a magic daddy in the sky so I’m better than you.”
… Read the restAnd in his first speech from the chamber as speaker, Mr. Johnson cast his ascendance to the position second in line to
Guest post: Democracy depends on deliberation
Oct 29th, 2023 11:14 am | By Ophelia BensonOriginally a comment by Mike Haubrich on More bags.
The trouble with Western democracies is that the people who stand for political office are commonly not themselves democrats. They prefer their own wills to prevail rather than those of the population-at-large. Some prize examples of elected anti-democrats spring readily to mind.
I always wondered what the purpose of a divided government was, why didn’t the founders set up a parliamentary system where the majority party holds the executive? The way it is, the executive branch can be hamstrung as it is about to be when the next U.S. government shutdown battle comes along (and Johnson will not make a deal like McCarthy did). But, when someone like Trump or … Read the rest
The resistance to fairness
Oct 29th, 2023 10:17 am | By Ophelia BensonThat sounds like a brilliant parody:
I wasn't impressed with the first book of the series. Will this one be any better?https://t.co/nGPleYOKdq pic.twitter.com/AoQNHuyJCe
— Miroslav Imbrisevic (@Miroandrej) October 29, 2023
The trans “struggle for justice” hahahahahahahaha hilarious.
Acknowledging the formidable hurdles trans and nonbinary athletes face in their struggles for inclusion, acceptance, and freedom, this book documents and analyses their resistance across a range of social-cultural and geopolitical contexts, from community sport to high-performance competition.
It looks like a parody but apparently isn’t.
So let’s talk about this “struggle” for “inclusion, acceptance, and freedom.”
Inclusion. We’ve been over this. We’ve been over this a billion times by now. Athletic competitions have categories and qualifications. … Read the rest
Protecting the public
Oct 29th, 2023 7:54 am | By Ophelia BensonThe list includes Mein Kampf and gender critical books…and nothing else.
Works by authors including Helen Joyce and Prof Kathleen Stock were hidden from view by a library service of the Labour-run Calderdale council, and are now barred from being promoted in displays in order to protect the public from offence.
The only other book similarly censored by the library service by being hidden was Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf.
So, it seems, the Calderdale library system considers gender-skeptical feminism to be on a level with genocidal Nazism.
That’s puzzling for a number of reasons. Like, for instance, the fact that gender-skeptical feminism is not genocidal or genocidal-adjacent or remotely in any way similar to or connected to genocide. … Read the rest
The boss frowns
Oct 28th, 2023 10:38 am | By Ophelia BensonSorry but this is too hilarious to pass up.
Fred to Willoughby:
“The less you say now the better”
If only Fred could take his own advice we wouldn’t have to listen to his drunken incoherent misogynist and homophobic drivel… pic.twitter.com/EUW3y82jD5
— The Women Exist Society (@WomensSocIre) October 28, 2023
Like the fact that there were five men and one woman discussing an issue about women? No, of course not that, that’s fine. Fred’s choices on the other hand…… Read the rest
Morning meal for canids
Oct 28th, 2023 10:12 am | By Ophelia BensonOh no, Inja and Fred are quarreling!
In the latest episode of Trans Genius a bloke who believes he grew a cervix is berating another bloke who likes to get sozzled in fishnet tights, while a paedo defender plays daddy.
Comedy classic.👇 pic.twitter.com/4Mwac9iseV— Malcolm Clark (@TwisterFilm) October 28, 2023
Take your time, boys. Be thorough.… Read the rest
More bags
Oct 28th, 2023 4:53 am | By Ophelia BensonThey killed the patient trying to save her.
An Iranian girl, 16, has died after she was allegedly beaten by morality police for not wearing a hijab.
Why is it so important for women to wear bags on their heads that it’s necessary to beat them to death for not doing it?
It’s not to protect them from anything, especially not from the sexual violence of godbothering men. It’s to make a big fuss about the “honor” of men, which is besmirched by the existence of those horrible oozing sluts known as “women.” If they’re not tightly wrapped like a supermarket cheese, they flop down in the street and spread their legs, so that explains why the “morality” police … Read the rest
What’s a little stoning between friends?
Oct 28th, 2023 3:03 am | By Ophelia BensonAw yeah, solidarity forever. Islamists and sex workers, unite and fight!
Our statement of solidarity with Palestine: pic.twitter.com/3ax9LcQODE
— Sex Workers’ Union (@swunion_uk) October 26, 2023
Two irreconcilable outlooks
Oct 28th, 2023 2:57 am | By Ophelia BensonThe Guardian reports there is conflict over the revamped NHS gender idenniny development service.
… Read the restThe opening of the hubs has been delayed by more than a year amid difficulties in recruiting staff, and tensions over how to train employees in caring for young people with gender dysphoria. Meanwhile, the waiting list of young people seeking help has grown to 5,766.
As delays to the openings continue, NHS England (NHSE) has started to divert thousands of 17-year-olds, and 16-year-olds who turn 17 before next March, towards the adult waiting list, where they are likely to receive a different, less exploratory form of treatment.
This development so concerned the mothers of two 17-year-olds that they launched a judicial review challenging the stark
Guest post: Kindness is not mandatory
Oct 27th, 2023 5:43 pm | By Ophelia BensonOriginally a comment by Holms on We know that something is being waved in our faces.
The claim that using someone’s pronouns of demand is a mere ‘kindness’ is belied by the fact that they are also claimed to be non-optional. Kindness is not mandatory, and mandates are by their nature not kind as there is the implication of enforcement, punishment, for failure to comply. It is further undermined by the revisionism we see at play with trans identities. When someone declares they have a gender identity, name, and/or pronouns at odds with their sex, it is immediately forbidden to mention even obliquely that the person ever had anything other than those even in the past. This is especially … Read the rest
Trans indigenous
Oct 27th, 2023 5:21 pm | By Ophelia Benson… Read the restWhen Buffy Sainte-Marie strolled onto Sesame Street in 1975, she was making history.
The Dec. 9 episode was the launch of the program’s efforts to present Indigenous culture to millions of viewers.
…
From the early days of her career, Sainte-Marie has claimed to be a Cree woman, born in Canada. She has also allowed herself to be celebrated as an Indigenous icon and success story.
In 2022, CBC broadcast a concert that was held in her honour at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, where Anishinabe musician ShoShona Kish told the audience: “Buffy Sainte-Marie has led the way for Indigenous music
The logic of witch-ducking
Oct 27th, 2023 11:03 am | By Ophelia BensonBrilliant and enraging: Helen Joyce dissects the intense deliberate sustained suppression of women’s views on Magic Gender.
There’s the double bind, for one thing – you get mostly silenced but if you manage to utter a peep that means you haven’t been silenced.
This is the logic of witch-ducking. If a woman drowns, she isn’t a witch; if she floats, she is, and must be dispatched some other way. Either way, she ends up dead.
Most of the stifling is secret and carefully hidden, but occasionally a bit of the curtain gets caught in someone’s zipper. Helen gives enraging examples – Intelligence Squared, the Irish Times, the BBC, ABC [the Australian one], Sky News.
… Read the restAll that Sky
We know that something is being waved in our faces
Oct 27th, 2023 10:12 am | By Ophelia BensonJoan Smith is. not. having. it.
Referring to Izzard or any other trans-identified man as “she” is profoundly insulting to women. In this instance, it happens to be the Guardian talking to Izzard “ahead of the release of her new film”. The word “her” has no place in that sentence, creating an immediate sense of cognitive dissonance. We know that something is being waved in our faces, challenging us to object to our own erasure.
What’s being waved in our faces is the [implicit] dick along with the explicit dick move of ordering us to ignore the dick as we are forced to submit to it.
… Read the restFor years we were told that using someone’s preferred pronouns was a matter
Invoke the royal exemption
Oct 27th, 2023 9:15 am | By Ophelia BensonPrincess doesn’t want to testify. Princess loses appeal.
Ivanka Trump will have to testify in a business fraud case against her father and brothers, a New York judge ruled. She had previously sought not to take the stand, arguing that she had moved out of the city and had stepped away from the Trump Organization. But Judge Arthur Engoron said she still maintains ties to Trump businesses and real estate in New York.
Wull can’t she just pocket the money without any of the consequences? She’s a princess!
… Read the restProsecutors have argued that Ms Trump has important information to share about the case. In his ruling on Friday, Judge Engoron sided with the prosecutors, writing: “Ms Trump has clearly availed
Union to women: get out
Oct 27th, 2023 4:32 am | By Ophelia BensonSo women don’t get to have unions any more.
This one goes out to the LGB Alliance, who want to know why we will never support their attempts to marginalise trans and gender-diverse people. Transphobia is not welcome in a union movement that seeks to support and lift up all workers. pic.twitter.com/cPMGqfQyBO
— Victorian Trades Hall Council (@VicUnions) October 26, 2023
What an absolutely disgusting way to treat workers who have the bad taste to be women.
First there’s the stupid lie that the LGB Alliance “attempts to marginalise trans and gender-diverse people.” No it doesn’t! Saying men are not women is not an attempt to marginalize men. It’s simply the truth that men are not women. If anyone is … Read the rest
Collisional cascading
Oct 27th, 2023 2:54 am | By Ophelia BensonBlood Knight alerted us to Kessler syndrome so I found When Elephants Fight in Space:
… Read the restWhen spacecraft collide with other objects conducting routine space activity or are intentionally destroyed via anti-satellite tests, this creates orbital debris and risks creating a cascading chain reaction of collisions and debris propagation. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) explains that “collisions with orbital debris can pit or damage spacecraft in the best case scenario and cause catastrophic failures in the worst.” Collisional cascading, also known as the Kessler Syndrome, is a dangerous phenomenon because it renders orbits less accessible for all states to reap the scientific, technological, and economic benefits. For these reasons, NASA maintains that the top threat to spacecraft,
GI=clothes
Oct 26th, 2023 4:45 pm | By Ophelia BensonPeter Tatchell says oh yes there is too so such a thing as a “gender identity.” What’s more, we all have one. What’s more, we can all tell what everyone’s “gender identity” is by looking at what everyone IS WEARING. So neat, so easy, so simple. Why didn’t anyone tell us this before???
For once I’m not indulging in hyperbole. He really does say that, and after the whole room squawks and shouts and says no, he says it all over again.
… Read the restGender identity is real because we decide what clothes we wear. 🤪
Amazing.
Clothes. Clothes!
Is fashion dead then? Because if it’s all about how we identify then presumably I’m only allowed to wear clothes of a certain
Just leave the hole
Oct 26th, 2023 2:29 pm | By Ophelia BensonA woman has been found guilty of taking a three-year-old British child to Kenya for female genital mutilation (FGM). Amina Noor, 39, is the first person to be convicted of assisting a non-UK person to perform FGM. Noor, from Harrow in north-west London, took the child to a private house for the procedure in 2006.
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It was only in 2015 that the girl – who is now aged 21 and who cannot be identified – confided to a schoolteacher that she had suffered FGM and police were informed.
Following an examination at University College Hospital in 2019 it was found that the girl’s clitoris had been completely removed.
That’s right: make sex a tiresome … Read the rest
Not photoshopped either?
Oct 26th, 2023 2:15 pm | By Ophelia BensonMany are sharing this little gem.
@IndiaWilloughby, Not a frump and still not a woman. pic.twitter.com/KJn7BTWlLr
— Jeremy Williams (@jeremy020264) October 26, 2023
Again – he’s a 57-year-old man doing an impersonation of a particularly silly 13-year-old girl. A 57-year-old man playing dressup for the edification of Twitter. A 57-year-old man saying “Haha you’re ugly.” A 57-year-old man smirking and pouting at the same time while taking selfies in the world’s stupidest hat. A 57-year-old man doing this. Not 15, not 20, not 22, but FIFTY SEVEN. Aren’t most people embarrassed to do silly teenage look-at-me shit in public once they’re, I don’t know, 35 or so?
But hey, being incloosive of trans laydeez is the most pressing issue … Read the rest