NPR chatted with Masha Gessen about comparing Gaza to Nazi ghettoes back in December.

Prominent Russian-American journalist Masha Gessen received a prestigious award for political thought over the weekend, in a ceremony that almost didn’t happen due to backlash over their recent writings on Israel-Gaza.

Israel’s air-and-ground assault on Gaza has killed more than 20,000 people in the 10 weeks since the Hamas-led attack on Israel killed some 1,200 people and took more than 240 others hostage.

Why did Israel commit this air-and-ground assault on Gaza? Because that’s where Hamas is. It didn’t do it as part of a broader campaign to kill all Muslims or all Arabs. It can still be a war crime, but comparable to Hitler’s … Read the rest

The Times of Israel in December:

The Russian-American writer Masha Gessen received a German literary prize Saturday in a ceremony that was delayed and scaled down in reaction to an article she penned comparing Gaza to Nazi German ghettos. The comparison in a recent New Yorker article was viewed as controversial in Germany, where government authorities strongly support Israel, in part as a form of compensation for the Holocaust and the murder of 6 million Jews.

Gessen, who was born Jewish in the Soviet Union, is critical of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.

One can be critical of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians without claiming it’s comparable to the Holocaust.

In Gessen’s article, titled “In the Shadow of the Holocaust,” the

Parental advice-giver found guilty of horrific child abuse. Of course.

Ruby Franke, a mother of six who gave online parenting advice via a popular YouTube channel, was sentenced to four prison terms of between one and 15 years each, on aggravated child abuse charges on Tuesday.

Franke, 42, who had 2.3 million followers on her now-deleted 8 Passengers video channel, was arrested in the southern Utah city of Ivins last August after her malnourished 12-year-old son, with open wounds and bound with duct tape, climbed out of a window at the home of Jodi Hildebrandt, owner of a self-improvement counseling business, to ask for food and water from a neighbor.

So her parenting advice is to hand your children … Read the rest

In Solicitors Behaving Badly news…

The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT) yesterday upheld allegations that a solicitor published antisemitic and offensive posts on social media and also abused Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) staff.

The conduct of Farrukh Najeeb Husain was reported to the regulator by leading law firm Bevan Brittan, where he was working as a self-employed consultant to deliver on a particular client mandate in spring 2021. Some of the key tweets were directed at Simon Myerson KC, a Jewish barrister, and Hugo Rifkind, a Jewish journalist at The Times.

And they are eye-watering.

In its rule 12 statement – setting out its case to the tribunal – the SRA alleged that, as well as being “plainly inappropriate,

Trump finally mentions Navalny, but…..

Well, you know. Not the normal way.

Seventy-two hours following the death of Alexei Navalny, Donald Trump made his first comments on the death of the Russian opposition leader Monday but stopped short of condemning anyone or offering sympathy.

Instead, the former president related his own legal woes to the death of Navalny, who died in prison on Friday at the age of 47. Trump on Friday was ordered to pay a $354.8 million penalty payment as part of civil fraud trial decision.

Apart from the callous self-serving, there’s the fact that Trump isn’t 47, Trump really is a criminal and a bad person, Trump isn’t dead.

“The sudden death of Alexei

Steve Scott’s interview with “Emily” Bridges wasn’t his first rodeo. He was pouring on the sympathy and flattery all the way back in June 2022.

Online abuse has become a way of life for Emily Bridges: “It is very difficult to read everything people are saying about you, and it hurts, it hurts.”

Maybe – and this is just a suggestion – if you weren’t cheating women in their own sport people wouldn’t be saying things about you that you find “difficult.” Maybe the people wouldn’t be hurty if you weren’t so cheaty.

Bridges has become one of the most talked about athletes in Britain and the discussions about her are seldom nuanced. She sits at the centre of

Man disagrees with woman by saying he doesn’t consider her sexually appetizing. How very original.

Don't go after her looks don't go after her looks Kela don't go after her looks Kela…. she'd get kicked out of her own bar before I would… fuck I tried https://t.co/p3x3199pXg

— Kela – deleting by December (@LifeonWheels95) February 20, 2024

… Read the rest

There’s also video.

Bridges at 0.30 says “if it was safe for me to compete” but doesn’t go on to explain how it’s not safe for him to compete. Of course it’s safe for him to compete against other men, apart from the risks all competitive cyclists take on. The claim that it’s unsafe for him in particular is just more of the maddening reversal all male trans “activists” go in for – pretending they’re vulnerable, they’re at risk, they’re unsafe, they might face physical violence.

Then he says “I can’t compete” and Scott says, rather unsympathetically, “But you can compete in an open category.” This flummoxes the lad a bit. He pauses, then asks with a girlish tilt … Read the rest

Not only does Steve Scott at ITV News write a fawning piece about “Emily” Bridges and his tragic failure to continue cheating women in cycling races, but also ITV News turns off comments on the Twitter link to said piece.

ITV News doesn’t turn off comments lightly…in fact it apparently never does except when the subject is an entitled man trying to cheat women in sports.

In the last three days, this is the only @itvnews tweet that has comments switched off.

No other group of people in society gets this level of protection from news outlets. Why is that? https://t.co/5OIZaTJgMJ

— Bob Hamstead (@berk_hamstead) February 20, 2024

Yes why is that? Why is that??… Read the rest

Oh good, more whining from a man about not being able to compete in women’s sports.

Emily Bridges once dreamt of racing for Olympic glory in Paris this summer. But after British Cycling barred transgender women [aka MEN] from competing in the female category last year, she has all but given up on elite sport.

Diddums. After British Cycling barred men who pretend to be women from competing in the female category, Bridges gave up. That’s good news.

Bridges said the policy amounts to a ban from elite cycling.  

“A ban is a ban. You can say you can compete in the open category, but we’re women – we should be able to race in the women’s category,”

Don’t mention the War.

For quite a while now, it has felt a bit like mainstream feminism has been dialled back 10 years. It’s not just the over-the-top obsession with the Barbie movie – there seems to have been a more generalized dumbing-down in the media when it comes to women’s issues. In 2021 and 2022, it felt like intersectional feminism was everywhere and nuanced discussions about how gender intersects with other forms of oppression, such as classism and racism, had moved from academic circles into the mainstream. It felt like there was a huge push – to paraphrase Rafia Zakaria, the author of Against White Feminism – to “put the fangs back in feminism”. Now, however,

Just imagine: a lesbian is planning a lesbian club and she’s not including men. So eccentric.

A feminist campaigner is to open Britain’s first lesbian members bar that will only allow biological women to join.

Well duh. It’s a lesbian members bar, so obviously it’s not for men.

(The men can always try the Garrick.)

The bar, named the L Community, is due to open in London later this year and will operate as a private members club so that it can bar trans women from signing up.

The bar has been set up by Jenny Watson, who in September last year was at the centre of a transphobia row after she insisted only “adult human females” could attend

The Daily Mail is surprisingly restrained on the subject of male breast milk.

[A]n NHS Trust says drug-induced milk from transgender women who were born male is as good for babies as a mother’s breast milk. A leaked letter from the medical director of University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust, published this week, describes both as ‘human milk’ and says that they are the ‘ideal food for infants’. The letter was sent on behalf of the Trust’s chief executive in response to a campaign group’s complaint about gender policies.

So what’s the truth? Can a biological male really breastfeed a baby by producing milk from their nipples? The complex answer is yes and no. By using a regimen known

The BBC hits a new low.

Part One pic.twitter.com/UdC3VIL2aG

— Cath Leng (@leng_cath) February 19, 2024

I couldn’t put them together at first. Have cut off the last couple of words but it was just thank yous after that https://t.co/t96b19JTkq

— Cath Leng (@leng_cath) February 19, 2024

… Read the rest

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on We’re the violent actors?

We’re not the ones shouting threats and posting images of guns and knives.

Pffft. That’s just a) passionate rhetoric; b) completely justified self defence; c) “just joking” or “ironic”; in other words, good, clean, healthy fun; d) taken out of context. Choose whichever one is most expedient to the particular threatener.

Canada’s intelligence agency is warning that extremists could “inspire and encourage” serious violence against the 2SLGBTQI+ community

I daresay that those of us posting here on B&W would all be branded as “extremists” in light of the inflated threat vocabulary of transactivists. If misgendering is “violence,” questioning gender identity is “denying their right to exist,” and … Read the rest

Wait what? Tranz kidz aren’t at greater risk of suicide if they don’t wreck their bodies? But we were assured they are!

A new study challenges the common assertion that gender-dysphoric youth are at elevated risk of suicide if not treated with “gender affirming” medical interventions. If it’s true, it ought to have a seismic impact on the accepted medical approach to gender-confused youth.

Reported in the BMJ, the study examines data on a Finnish cohort of gender-referred adolescents between 1996 and 2019, and compares their rates of all-cause and suicide mortality against a control group. While suicide rates in the gender-referred group studied were higher than in the control group, the difference was not large: 0.3% versus 0.1%.

Every bit as good for babies, they say.

An NHS trust has said that breast milk produced by trans women who were assigned male at birth [i.e. men] is as good for babies as that produced by a mother who has given birth.

In a letter to campaigners, the University of Sussex Hospitals NHS Trust (USHT), said that the milk produced by trans women after taking a combination of drugs is “comparable to that produced following the birth of a baby”.

“Comparable” is a weasel-word there. Sure, you can compare the two, but they’re not the same, or alike.

In an August 2023 response, the hospital defended its claims, referring to five scientific papers dating back to 1977 and

Oh yay, yet another piece on how self-obsessed it’s possible to be.

I’m non-binary. I came to terms with this recently, after living socially as a woman for many years — but I think I knew from a very young age. I just didn’t have the right words for it.

Are you really???? How fascinating and exciting! Please tell us everything about it in the utmost detail.

Then puberty hit and assigned me with the very special task of looking after two giant sacks of flesh, fat and membrane.

In every play I performed in after that point, I was only ever cast as matronly old women or busty temptresses. It sucked.

Well now that’s a different story. The … Read the rest

Well that’s me convinced!

Top quality advocacy for sure.… Read the rest

The CBC has got to be kidding.

CSIS warns that the ‘anti-gender movement’ poses a threat of ‘extreme violence’

Seriously? We’re not the ones shouting threats and posting images of guns and knives.

Canada’s intelligence agency is warning that extremists could “inspire and encourage” serious violence against the 2SLGBTQI+ community — a threat the Canadian Security Intelligence Service says almost certainly will continue over the coming year.

…

“CSIS assesses that the violent threat posed by the anti-gender movement is almost certain to continue over the coming year and that violent actors may be inspired by the University of Waterloo attack to carry out their own extreme violence against the 2SLGBTQI+ community or against other targets they view as representing