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

Sums it up perfectly.

I looked up the Salt Lake Tribune cartoonist: his name is Pat Bagley.… Read the rest

Why yes. Thanks for the admission.

Trump: We’ve been waging an all out war on American democracy pic.twitter.com/4YQDfsvTwi

— Acyn (@Acyn) December 2, 2023

… Read the rest

If girls want privacy they should stay home, the little sluts.

In June 2022 we sent senior legal counsel's advice to @AngusCouncil that there is an enforceable legal obligation on local authorities to make provision for separate toilets for boys and girls and we asked them to ensure schools complied with the law… https://t.co/ASvFwzUnze

— For Women Scotland (@ForWomenScot) December 3, 2023

… Read the rest

World’s first tampons for men

Vuokkoset, a Finnish company released the controversial new sanitary product earlier this month to coincide with Transgender Awareness week and International Men’s day. The product comes in a dark blue box which bears the words “For Men” on one side, but then extends this phrase around the packaging so it eventually reads “For Menstruation”. On another side of the packet it is stated that “periods are not a gender issue”.

Vuokkoset has said in a statement online that it launched the period product to “raise the issue of genderness of hygiene products and the anxiety related to menstruation in trans men”.

Yeah the “genderness” of products designed to absorb menstrual blood – why would such … Read the rest

Who doesn’t love being told exactly what to say?

Also exactly what not to say?

Originally a comment by Arcadia on I wanted them to be super fit.

If I may, “just deliver an egg” is quite minimising language about what actually happens. Egg donors aren’t like sperm donors, it’s not a pleasant process where she can just have a wank and catch millions of eggs in a sterile container.

Egg donation requires extensive hormonal medication to induce her to overproduce eggs, trigger shots to release them, lots of vaginal ultrasounds to determine the progress of the eggs, and the eggs are retrieved with a huge needle. None of it is fun, and risks are attached for her at every stage. Many women note how awful IVF is to undergo; egg donation is that … Read the rest

Not a problem.

Police have wrongly labelled hundreds of suspected rapists as women, The Telegraph can reveal – despite the Home Secretary saying they should not do so. Over the past four years, police forces have referred 260 “females” to the … (CPS) … to consider a charge of rape. A further 209 suspects have been recorded with an “unknown” sex, which is understood to include those who identify as non-binary. By law, rape can only be committed by a biological male.

So the police have ruled more than 400 men not guilty of rape, by the police’s own fiat. The police have ruled that more than 400 men are not men, which renders them not capable of and … Read the rest

All perfectly normal yeah?

A former soldier turned keyboard warrior has been hit with a restraining order after a terrifying hate campaign directed at a number of successful women including a leading barrister.

David Mottershead, 42, who claimed to be standing up for ‘men’s rights’ sent death threats to various successful women including Dr Charlotte Proudman, leaving her fearing for her life.

The ex-soldier posted a chilling picture of himself holding a gun, with his face smeared in camouflage paint and his finger on the trigger aiming at Dr Proudman, telling her: ‘You’ll panic as I inhale your last breath’ in a tweet addressed to her.

Free speech innit.

Mottershead, who was later found to have armed himself with a

Reem Alsalem is quoted as saying things about the violence against women on November 20. The format is rather odd, though I guess it’s normal for press releases from orgs – it’s a long string of “she said” without saying where when how she said. It’s a press release awkwardly put into the third person. What for? Why not just put her name on it as author?

Anyway, for the record, she does mention Israeli women.

Once.

GENEVA (20 November 2023) – Women and children have disproportionately borne the brunt of the conflict in Israel and Gaza, a UN expert said today.

“While these atrocities affect both women and men, their impact is gendered and disproportionately affects women,” said Reem

This in an ongoing theme, or pair of themes or set of nested themes – the selectivity of concerns about violence, slaughter, rape, genocide, torture, kidnapping, massacres.

One place you really don’t want to see that kind of selectivity is the UN.

George Santos too much even for some Republicans.

The difference between the first two unsuccessful expulsion attempts and this one was the release of a damning ethics committee report that provided extensive details of alleged misconduct by Mr Santos.

“Damning” may be an understatement, in fact. The 56-page report detailed “substantial evidence” of corruption, fraud and misuse of campaign funds that included personal expenditures on clothing, Botox treatments and OnlyFans, a platform where users pay for content, including pornography.

Hahahahahaha botox and porn. What a twerp.

When combined with Mr Santos’s well-established lying about his personal history during his 2022 congressional campaign and his multi-count federal indictment for money laundering, fraud, identity theft and falsifying documents, a near

This is how they talk about the woman they pay to gestate a baby for them:

The egg donor. Them. That person. Someone.

And then the consumerist box ticking – must be both gorgeous and brilliant. Nothing but the best for team Manufacture a Baby!… Read the rest

Oh my god.

First I saw this:

So I dug around (had to dig since U of T had closed everything) and found this:

National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women

which has the subtitle

Care, Healing, and Justice: Addressing Transmisogyny and Ending Gender-Based Violence for All

Even on this one day, even when they’re pretending to talk about violence against women, even then they make it about men who call themselves women. Even then.

U of T smugly goes on:

On December 6, U of T joins communities across Canada in remembering the 14 women killed in a devastating act of misogyny at the engineering school at Montreal’s École Polytechnique in 1989. 

This event is co-hosted

Originally a comment by Sastra on Define “suitable”.

… there’s an exercise at the end. It’s a Gender Comparison Activity. Children are asked to write down things which make them feel like the gender they are – like the way they dress, their favourite colours, the way they act, the games and toys they like to play with. Then they’re asked to make a separate list of things which are associated with the opposite gender – like if they are a boy but they like to play with dolls (that is the actual example given).

Then the children are asked to think whether those lists make them feel any differently about their gender.

If they weren’t thinking about themselves

Really? They’re going with that? “No safeguarding for children in schools!!!” They think that’s a good move?

What we say not what we do.

King Charles III challenged a gathering of world leaders to take “genuine transformational action” to slow the spiral of greenhouse gas emissions, declaring that “the hope of the world rests on the decisions you must take.”

Speaking at the opening ceremony of the United Nations climate summit in Dubai, Charles listed a cascade of climate-related natural disasters that had afflicted the world in the last year: wildfires in Canada; floods in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh; cyclones in the Pacific; and a drought in East Africa.

He’s not wrong, of course, but…

For Charles, who was asked by the British government not to attend the 2022 COP meeting in Egypt, this was a

Of course. Of course some horses are tigers. Of course some cars are hammers. Of course some trees are daffodils. Of course some people are witches. Of course we can just announce that words now mean something new and absurd and order everyone to agree with us on pain of banishment.

This is a book for FIVE year olds??

 When I saw that Jessica Kingsley were publishing a new book for children on gender, I was immediately interested. Jessica Kingsley are a respected publisher who often produce specialist psychology books. They have a solid reputation and I have many colleagues who have published books with them. I was predisposed to liking the book.

I order The Gender Book. It is advertised as suitable for five to twelve year olds, but the illustrations make it clear that it’s focused more on the younger kids. It’s brightly coloured and looks like lots of other picture books. The characters are ethnically diverse and wide-eyed. Two of them, Casey and Ellie, are our guides. They start off by telling us