Dress normal god damn it!

In the 1980s, people in China could land themselves in trouble with the government for their fashion choices.

Flared pants and bluejeans were considered “weird attire.” Some government buildings barred men with long hair and women wearing makeup and jewelry. Patrols organized by factories and schools cut flared pants and long hair with scissors.

I kind of know the feeling. I’m extremely judgmental, and

[by the way I’m so judgmental that I’m annoyed that “judgmental” isn’t spelled “judgemental” because ffs people without the e the g is pronounced as in gun or gone or gulp]

because I’m very judgey I often do have a censorious opinion about what other people are wearing. Yoga pants for … Read the rest

Women=fascist scum. Not just terfs, but women in general, women as such. We’re all fascist scum.

While we were inside the museum talking about human rights the crowd were outside chalking threats on the pavement

ADULT HUMAN FEMALE NOUN: FASCIST SCUM pic.twitter.com/BiquUET6Du

— Maya Forstater (@MForstater) September 11, 2023

… Read the rest

I’ve seldom read anything more wounding. A Guardian autobiographical tale of a UK teenager who longed to go west:

I applied to US colleges I had heard of in films. I studied SAT books and got a good enough score to attempt the admissions process. Things started to happen. I bunked off sixth form to attend interviews. In films these are huge moments of plot development…

The campus was eerily pristine; if there was a leaf on the ground it would be swept up almost immediately. No wonder, because the campus was literally a film set. This was where Buffy the Vampire Slayer went to college and Elle Woods checked into Harvard in Legally Blonde. Hip-hop dancers had dance-offs

Paul Murphy is TD for Dublin South West. TD=Teachta Dála, a member of Dáil Éireann, the lower house of the Oireachtas (the Irish Parliament). 

He did this today.

A legislator put a target on a reporter’s child on social media.… Read the rest

Whoopsie, the Pope let the mask slip.

The Vatican sought to defend Pope Francis on Tuesday after he sparked fury in Ukraine by praising Russia’s imperial rulers — a history President Vladimir Putin has invoked to justify his ongoing war.

The Kremlin delighted in the controversy, which stemmed from comments the pontiff made to a group of young Russian Catholics urging them to see themselves as the heirs of a “great” empire.

No no no, Mister Pontiff, that’s the part you’re not supposed to say out loud. You’re not supposed to admit it’s about power and domination. Big big no-no.

“Don’t forget your heritage. You are the descendants of great Russia: the great Russia of saints, rulers, the

Still doing it, is he? Guy who likes to tweet enhanced photos of his 58-year-old male self, calling women frumps and old relics? Guy who has been around for 58 years and still hasn’t caught on that playground-bullying isn’t a good look on an adult?

Pakistan Willoughby says:

The entirety of the Helen Joyce ‘Gender Critical’ movement meeting in a Manchester museum for old relics today. Wow. Around 1,000 cis women outside, standing WITH the trans community, opposing GC bigotry and hate. Terf now stands for Trans Exclusionary Radical Frump.

With photo of actual women rather than the pretend kind.

H/t Rob for the link after Willz tried to hide.… Read the rest

Hmmm.

Beatification for Polish family murdered for sheltering Jews

A beatification Mass service has been held in Poland for a Catholic family murdered by Nazis for hiding Jews during World War Two. Poland’s president and more than 30,000 pilgrims attended the outdoor service, led by Pope Francis’ envoy. This was the first time an entire family has been beatified, a great honour and a step towards sainthood.

They were executed in 1944 with the Jews they sheltered in south-eastern Poland, after they were betrayed.

That’s all very nice but the BBC fails to murmur so much as a word about the Catholic church’s relationship to Nazism and Anti-Semitism. The Catholic church was not a beacon of resistance to Nazism in … Read the rest

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Most don’t have a grounding.

So I can only guess that being incomprehensible is the point – it’s supposed to be inaccessible to the plebs.

Keeping things in house, acting as interpreters, gatekeepers and guides gives merchants of obscurantinism control over the narrative. Would Judith Butler be as influential if she wrote simply and understandably? She takes adantage of the all-too-common belief that things that are complex are difficult to understand, and there “must be something to it” if it’s coming from a professor.

But there’s a difference between specialized vocabulary (which can involve a lot of technical jargon), and obfuscatory bullshit. The core of genderism is that “gender identity” … Read the rest

Originally a comment by Coel on Most don’t have a grounding.

One reason science papers are inaccessible is the language of science requires a vocabulary most people don’t have. [iknklast]

Agreed, and to add to this, it is not just a matter of using different words (as if they were using every-day concepts, but talking in German rather than English). Rather, each of these jargon words represents a concept that is not present in everyday life.

Thus someone could be familiar with the car-mechanic’s word “carburettor”, but still not understand how a carburettor combines with other components into an engine. Imagine explaining that term to an intelligent and educated person from the 14th century.

There are physicists writing books

This seems like a very insane thing to do to young children:

Kids in a primary school have been told to refer to their gender-neutral teacher as “they” in the classroom. The Third Class pupils returned to school last week to be informed their new teacher wants to be referred to by first name only, or the pronoun “they”.

The children from the Dublin Educate Together school – aged 8 and 9 – were told this on their first day back, according to parents. They have since been corrected by the teacher for saying “she” and taught to say “they” instead.

Look, these are children. They’re still learning the language. It’s idiotic to teach them a wrong version … Read the rest

More from the Manchester event:

A good mix of signs from the TRAs and they are peacefully protesting.
The police are still here but are leaving imminently. pic.twitter.com/T2cmz0djTp

— NorthernRadFemNetwork (@FemNorthern) September 10, 2023

As we left to get a coffee this was the response.
I have lived in Manchester all of my life and will always walk these streets.
I will not be cowed and removed by anyone against my will. pic.twitter.com/3gIvWXxuDR

— NorthernRadFemNetwork (@FemNorthern) September 10, 2023

That hefty guy in the black top and blue skirt near the right margin is the one who told her to “get off our streets.” He flapped his hand at her in a “shoo” gesture. Very bossy, very entitled, very rude, … Read the rest

The People’s History Museum stood up for the people known as “women”!

.@MForstater and I had a lovely morning at the People's History Museum in Manchester, explaining equality & human-rights law. Staff fab, police fab. The usual rabble afterwards adding to the day's jollity pic.twitter.com/pBPKfgh2lf

— Helen Joyce (@HJoyceGender) September 10, 2023

Thank you to the women (and men) of Manchester who welcomed us. And the staff at the People's History Museum, the security guys and the Greater Manchester Police who looked after us.

We had a great meeting talking about @SexMattersOrg and women's rights. https://t.co/vP1Pw8jfxP pic.twitter.com/zmsOlOZUZh

— Maya Forstater (@MForstater) September 10, 2023

Then some anti-feminist goons tried to rain on the parade but they failed.… Read the rest

Hmmm. I doubt that.

Donald Trump was “really, really upset” when he learned that his former White House adviser Peter Navarro had been convicted of contempt of Congress, according to the ex-president’s close ally Rudy Giuliani.

“This one really got to me,” Giuliani – the former New York City mayor and Trump attorney – said Friday on the far-right media outlet Newsmax. “I was with former president Trump when we found out about it [on Thursday], and I’ve got to tell you, he was really, really upset about it.”

No he wasn’t. He was pissed off. Not the same thing.

Trump doesn’t get “upset.” Ever. He doesn’t feel sorrow or (emotional) pain or grief, much less sympathy or … Read the rest

Is it progressive to tell people to kill themselves?

I would have thought no.

AND ANOTHER THING.

Because I missed it the first time around.

GC women though don’t in the main work from a feminist opposition to- or even understanding of-patriarchy. Most don’t have a grounding in feminist theory or a background in feminist politics. They are an uninformed mismatch of gender conservatives who make it up as they go along

— Sally Hines (@sally_hines) September 8, 2023

“Most don’t have a grounding in feminist theory” – so she’s saying if you’re not an academic with a grounding in feminist theory, you’re…suspect, shall we say. Not quite good enough. Inferior. Not up to Sally Hines’s standards.

So she’s saying feminism is for academics. Like her. She’s saying it’s an academic subject, with an … Read the rest

Sally Does SCIENCE!!

But Peter, ‘biological sex’ does change. That’s what hormones do. Also we don’t really know another’s ‘biology’ – or even our own. We don’t know someone’s chromosomal or hormonal makeup. We just make random guesses in line with a reductive framework of understanding

— Sally Hines (@sally_hines) September 8, 2023

… Read the rest

Sally Hines is still hating on feminists while claiming to be a feminist.

She starts by reminiscing about her involvement in feminism in her teens and twenties.

A man who wanted to be a feminist ally could usefully run the crèche, wash the pots, write the Xmas cards . But quietly and without expecting praise. Useful possibly. Needed never. Given the megaphone, impossible.

— Sally Hines (@sally_hines) September 8, 2023

But now, she goes on to say, all they have to do is say “I’m a woman” and they’re given the microphone to call feminist women misogynist names…hahaha just kidding. Of course she goes on to say the opposite of that.

And they attract and welcome some of the very

Oh not Kew ffs. Kew is one of the best things on the planet (albeit far too expensive now).

Next month, @kewgardens are running a series of ‘Queer Nature’ events.

They will include looking at “the connections between plants and LGBTQ+ communities” and “breaking the binary of plant classification”.

They will even feature drag artists. I can only imagine the costumes. pic.twitter.com/E8Wz4kYQ7j

— James Esses (@JamesEsses) September 6, 2023

https://twitter.com/kewgardens/status/1700063362883727458

Oh do stop. Write an opera about queer idenninies if you like but leave Kew out of it. Kew is a botanical garden, not a museum of queer idenninies.

Hi Jane, the intention behind using the term has always been to create an inclusive and welcoming space for the LGBTQ+

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Nothing added to nothing is nothing.

He’s fooled himself into thinking a few superficial trappings can fool a survival mechanism (telling a conspecific’s sex) that’s hundreds of millions of years old. We are wired to clock someone’s sex from scores and scores of yards away, even in dim light where all we can make out is a sillhouette and a gait. No doubt many of the other people he thinks he’s fooling are just being nice and humouring him, or hoping to avoid an angry, aggressive “IT’S MA’AM!” response. Even if his makeup was, according to his hair stylist, “on point and flawless,” it might only mean he’d applied it … Read the rest

Originally a comment by Artymorty on But are you?

It’s so creepy because it’s so paranoid. Signalling that there’s a kind of diffuse, spectral force of terror out there. The world is just so, so full of evil people! But I’m not one of them! I’m safe!

The real force of terror is the idea itself — the paranoia that at any moment you could be marked as One of Them instead of One of Us, the Good People. So you must be vigilant and demonstrate your commitment to Us, against Them.

It’s the Crucible. The poster might as well say:

I am not a witch.

If you are

in any way

afraid

of being harmed by a witch

or … Read the rest