So a surprise guest turned up at the Filia conference.
https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1713539479036711412Message of support played from @Martina to the #FiLiA2023 Women and to @jk_rowling … the room goes wild with joy.
Sisterhood and Solidarity! pic.twitter.com/1ldGRIBTzs
— FiLiA (@FiLiA_charity) October 15, 2023
https://twitter.com/MaraMatria/status/1713501610956005865 https://twitter.com/Wild_Womyn/status/1713497740980728246
All the cool kids.… Read the rest
And speaking of hatred and incitement to violence – heavily filtered man in a dress brandishes his fists in our general direction.
"I've been nominated for Woman of the Year – and I'm thrilled"
✍️ @IndiaWilloughby writes exclusively for the Herald about the "small green shoot" of hope for trans people
Read the piece in full here: https://t.co/mo3FcXx5xr pic.twitter.com/Boya4DMFTE
— The Herald (@heraldscotland) October 15, 2023
Watcha gonna do, Indy, punch the nearest woman? What’s your point?
He takes us through his morning, which starts with checking Twitter for what people are saying about him.
… Read the restI dry my hair, do my make-up. Head off to the cafe where I’m writing my book.
And, after ordering my usual pot of Darjeeling,
… Read the restAntisemitic incidents in the UK have more than quadrupled since Hamas’s attack on Israel, says a charity which helps Jewish people in the UK. The Community Security Trust (CST) recorded 89 “anti-Jewish hate” incidents from 7 to 10 October. That marked a more than four-fold rise on the 21 antisemitic incidents recorded in the same period last year.
Security Minister Tom Tugendhat said he was “very concerned” at reports of an increase in antisemitism.
…
Mr Tugendhat said he took the rise in antisemitism in the UK “extremely seriously” and urged a crackdown on the spread of hate. He compared the ideology of Hamas to that of the Nazis in the 1930s and 40s.
Goodness gracious me, a woman refused to have a conversation with a random guy who walked up to her in the street and requested a chat.
Trans entitlement. A creepy dude who almost certainly gets turned on by dressing up as a woman, walks up to a female and expects her to explain her T shirt. Imagine women walked up to AGP fetishists and demanded they justified what they’re wearing. Never hear the end of it. pic.twitter.com/Mv3g0aNJp2
— Malcolm Clark (@TwisterFilm) October 15, 2023
Nobody has to consent to invitations to talk from total strangers encountered randomly out in the world. Nobody. An appeal for help is one thing, but a request to chat is very much another. A man … Read the rest
Originally a comment by YNnB (yes again) on A blanket fort for big babies.
Happily, this is a task at which anthropology should excel: spotting where the preoccupations of one cultural order—in this case, that of a late-modern, mostly Anglophone, very-online ecumene—are fervently insisted upon by members of that order as constitutive of reality itself.
Wait. Is she saying that the freshly-minted concept of “transness” is a narrow, Western, hegemonic, colonial imposition on the rest of the world’s varied cultures?! Say it’s not so!
This is just so outrageously meta, with anthropologists failing to recognize the global projection and reification of their own particular, parochial concerns and ideas. They can see the arbitrary, constructed, local nature of everyone … Read the rest
Two men win top spots in women’s race:
Transgender athletes – biological men – have been infiltrating women’s cycling for quite some time and now the absurdity has hit a new level with a pair of trans cyclists winning gold and silver in the women’s division of Chicago’s CycloCross Cup.
Tessa Johnson took the top place on the podium during the women’s SingleSpeed with Evelyn Williamson finishing second. Allison Zmuda, a biological female earned bronze in the competition, and somehow stood on the podium with a smile on her face after losing to two biological men who competed against her with a biological advantage.
Two men cheated and the woman who came in third pretended to be happy.
https://twitter.com/i_heart__bikes/status/1711201304092246455… Read the restOriginally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on True inclusion requires more and more and more.
Getting to true inclusion for LGBTQIA2S+ employees requires much more than an inclusive and respectful workplace policy…
Oh? “Much more?” For most people, you’d think that would be sufficient.
True inclusion for LGBTQIA2S+ employees means creating a psychologically safe workplace environment…
Please define “a psychologically safe workplace environment. ” Isn’t this a good thing for everyone to have? Why do I get the feeling that “psychological safety” isn’t going to be as “inclusive” as it should be, and that some employees’ “needs” are going to be prioritized over others. We saw this with Maya Forstater and Alison Bailey. All this “true inclusion” … Read the rest
A woman is somebody who is born a woman or somebody who has a certificate.
Julia Long is at the @fawcettsociety asking the tough questions. @HarrietHarman thinks men are women if they have a certificate! pic.twitter.com/8BPWgpktSz
— Venice Allan (@roseveniceallan) October 14, 2023
So, a rabbit is somebody who is born a rabbit or somebody who has a certificate. A shark is somebody who is born a shark or or somebody who has a certificate. A polar bear is somebody who is born a polar bear or or somebody who has a certificate.
How does this work, exactly? How does a certificate change the facts of the DNA of a living organism? Can anyone explain it?… Read the rest
Have a hair-raisingly brilliant piece of writing by anthropologist Kathleen Lowrey:
We’ve met her before via Anthropologists made of crystal and Let’s you not talk last month, about the panel abruptly canceled at the last minute for the usual stupid reasons.
… Read the restI was motivated to propose the panel by my concern that anthropological publications increasingly deploy “gender” in a manner that implies gender systems are neutral manifestations of human diversity. Second, more and more anthropological literature seeks to reverse-engineer “sex” as if it takes the form of a “spectrum,” while presuming that “biological sex” is possessed of no independent analytic utility.
These developments have generated a conceptual tangle in desperate need of unraveling. Happily, this is
This is hard to read. I had to take it in stages.
Hamas attack on Israel kibbutz Be’eri captured by mothers’ WhatsApp group
… Read the restShortly after sunrise on the morning of Saturday 7 October, a message pings on 200 phones of the Be’eri mothers’ WhatsApp group.
Minutes later another message lands: “We have a terrorist on the stairs. Call someone.”
WARNING: Some readers may find details in this article distressing.
Hamas gunmen had just begun a day-long rampage through this kibbutz in southern Israel, and over the next 20 hours the women channelled their horror, disbelief and reassurances through the chat – as militants roamed the neighbourhood shooting residents dead and setting fire to homes.
Hiding in their safe rooms these
Bonne nuit.
— Rachel Rooney (@RooneyRachel) October 13, 2023
Students pushing the envelope just a tad.
Hanin Barghouti, the women’s officer at Sussex University’s student union, gave a speech in Brighton endorsing the attacks by Hamas, calling them “a victory”.
Ellie Gomersall, the president of the National Union of Students (NUS) Scotland, apologised after reposting messages justifying Hamas’s actions in Israel. She wrote: “I shared content last night that I deeply regret sharing. In doing so I promoted hate and division. I shouldn’t have. I have deleted it.”
Carefully missing the point as usual. The issue isn’t hate and division so much as it is mass murder. Translating that to abstract hate n division is just self-soothing, not to say self-flattery.… Read the rest
So this is what Dr Jonny Dennis got up to when feminist women dared to attend a conference he disapproves of.
https://twitter.com/genericeddie/status/1712751152117199280Note the ratbag in orange next to him who is pulling or pushing at the women as they struggle to get past Jonny and his thrusting crotch to get through the opening in the fence. Jonny, remember, whined on Twitter afterwards the the women “kicked” and “stood on” the poor sad feeble tragic protesters.
I usually don’t agree with calls for universities to fire the more excitable trans “activists” but I think this toad should be out on his ass.… Read the rest
Via J.A. at Miscellany Room, a little missive from his HR department:
Written by PRIDE: LGBTQIA2S+ employee resource group
Getting to true inclusion for LGBTQIA2S+ employees requires much more than an inclusive and respectful workplace policy or rainbow branding each year for Pride month.
True inclusion for LGBTQIA2S+ employees means creating a psychologically safe workplace environment and expanding allyship practices across all departments.
The PRIDE employee resource group has been actively advocating and working toward inclusion for LGBTQIA2S+ employees in both big and small changes this year, such as promoting inclusive benefits and policies for LGBTQIA2S+ employees and intentionally recruiting for LGBTQIA2S+ representation. PRIDE has also been working with HR on smaller steps like including personal pronouns in … Read the rest
Off to a good start.
https://twitter.com/scepticalPhil/status/1712770278344827040 https://twitter.com/scepticalPhil/status/1712735266065068354… Read the restOriginally a comment by Tim Harris on Objectively terrible.
There is a new book out that has received extremely favourable reviews from people I respect: The Identity Trap: A Story of Ideas & Power in Our Time, by Yascha Mounk, professor of the Practice of International Affairs at John Hopkins University, and a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
It arrived yesterday, and I have been skimming it. It is very well and fairly written, shows how the ideas you find in Critical Race Theory, for example, derive from thinkers like Foucault & Deleuze, and addresses the arguments (and fights) over transgender people, among many other things.
What I like about Mounk is that he takes … Read the rest
The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel:
MADISON – Assembly Republicans passed legislation Thursday that would ban transgender girls and women from competing on high school and college women’s sports teams and bar doctors from providing gender-transition treatment for minors.
Lawmakers approved the three bills in a 63-35 vote, with all Democrats voting against the measures and nearly all Republicans voting for the measures.
…
Democratic Gov. Tony Evers has promised to veto the bills.
Girls’ and women’s sports aren’t for girls and women any more, they’re for girls and women and any boys and men willing to claim they are transgender. Do what I may, I can’t see that as anything but unfair to girls and women.
… Read the restDemocrats pushed back on Vos’
Attempt to cancel women fails:
TRANS rights activists have lost a battle to cancel a conference they claimed was transphobic after the venue was threatened with legal action.
Glasgow Trans Rally launched an unsuccessful campaign to have [the] Glasgow venue [called] Platform ditch an event planned to go ahead by FiLiA, a gender-critical feminist charity.
FiLiA said Platform, in the former site of The Arches nightclub, had initially caved in to pressure and cancelled until they were threatened with legal action and reinstated the event.
You want pressure? We’ll give you pressure. See this contract?
… Read the restOrganisers hailed the outcome as a victory for “freedom of speech”.
Confirmed speakers at the event include SNP politicians Ruth Maguire and Joanna Cherry,
Um.
Wisconsin State Rep. Dave Considine during debate on a bill to ban boys playing girl’s sports:
“Some parents are concerned their daughter might miss out on a scholarship… That sounds like selfishness.”
pic.twitter.com/ET3tMZ9dIr— Greg Price (@greg_price11) October 12, 2023
Some parents are concerned that their daughter might miss out on a scholarship. They might miss out on playing for this team or that team. [long pause] Boy, that doesn’t sound like community, that sounds like selfishness, I’m sorry to label it that way but that sounds like what it is to me.
And it’s not selfish at all for a boy who claims to be a girl to take away a girl’s chance at a scholarship, no no … Read the rest
The Times on that Edinburgh “protest”:
… Read the restAttendees of a book launch about gender politics at Edinburgh University have described being intimidated and “assaulted” by trans rights demonstrators. About 70 people answered calls from the local branch of the University and College Union (UCU) to demonstrate against the publication of Sex and Gender: A Contemporary Reader, claiming that the book is transphobic.
The activists attempted to block access to the launch venue, a lecture theatre at the foot of 40 George Square, the building formerly known as David Hume Tower. Protesters chanted “shame on you” at each person who entered the building, as well as “trans rights are human rights”. They also held rainbow placards.
Marion Calder,
