All entries by this author

Rainbow laces

Jul 21st, 2023 5:12 am | By

The part of Beth Rigby’s interview of Iain Anderson that deals with the gross insult of “Lia” Thomas stealing women’s wins is absolutely disgusting. He blathers and huffs and bloviates and completely ignores the obvious, gruesome, painful injustice to the women, the mere tedious boring nobody cares women.

“Do you think that’s fair Iain?”

“So, em, sport by sport, people are looking at this, they absolutely are – we’re about to … Read the rest



Guest post: The distinction between ‘friend’ and ‘enemy’

Jul 21st, 2023 4:43 am | By

Originally a comment by Tim Harris on Do it to her and her.

Carl Schmitt, that highly intelligent but nasty old Nazi, had some interestingly nasty thoughts on the importance of making a distinction between ‘friend’ and ‘enemy’: “The specific political distinction to which political actions and motives can be reduced is that between friend and enemy.” Though I doubt whether any Tory politicians know much about Schmitt’s thought, one saw (and sees) his playbook in action in the Brexit disaster, both before and after Britain’s leaving the EU, when not only virulent Brexiters with no formal political power but the British government as well deliberately sought to cast the EU as an enemy who sought Britain’s destruction.

Hitler … Read the rest



The picture stays onscreen

Jul 20th, 2023 3:37 pm | By

Well of course he does. What answer can he give?

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Maddening

Jul 20th, 2023 3:26 pm | By

Beth Rigby on Sky News talked to Stonewall chair Iain Anderson about the war on feminist women. He tells us it’s Both Sides.

No it isn’t. Not even close. We get abuse, insults, name-calling, venomous misogyny day in day out. Very few of us on team terf try to match them.

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Interlude: the subjunctive

Jul 20th, 2023 11:18 am | By

From The Guardian:

“A site visit carried out on 12 July 2023 confirmed that whilst the colour of door is currently pale pink and not white as required by the notice, it is a muted colour and is acceptable to under-enforce the requirements of the enforcement notice.

“It is therefore recommended that the case is closed.”

And, down the page:

In a report to councillors recommending that the council take no further action, the city’s chief planning officer, David Givan, warned that Dickson remained on notice.

See it? In the first extract the subjunctive is not used, and in the second it is. It’s especially interesting because it’s the same kind of subjunctive – the kind that follows “recommend … Read the rest



Boebert shook her head no

Jul 20th, 2023 10:13 am | By

Takes the breath away.

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Do it to her and her

Jul 20th, 2023 7:53 am | By

When in doubt, find some women to torture.

A video showing two women being paraded naked by a mob in the north-eastern state of Manipur, hit by violent ethnic clashes, has sparked outrage in India. The police say they have opened a case of gang rape and arrested a man, adding that others will be held soon.

Deadly violence has plunged Manipur, a scenic Indian state bordering Myanmar, into turmoil for more than two months. Clashes between members of the majority Meitei and the Kuki tribal communities have resulted in their complete segregation. At least 130 people have died and 60,000 have been displaced. The two women, who are Kukis, were assaulted by men of the Meitei group.

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His body chemistry

Jul 20th, 2023 7:39 am | By

Maybe Willoughby is a secret agent undermining trans ideology from within.

https://twitter.com/ilovepreserves/status/1681950189911719936… Read the rest


Remanded in custody at a men’s prison

Jul 20th, 2023 6:02 am | By

This just in.

Allegedly, on video.… Read the rest



A site of epistemic injustice

Jul 19th, 2023 5:52 pm | By

The rest of that section of the paper:

Freeman (2015) argues that contemporary pregnancy, in particular, has become a site of epistemic injustice through processes of medical professionals and technologies assuming power and epistemic authority over pregnancy and pregnant people, often denying or superseding the epistemic privilege, knowledge, and control that a pregnant person has over their own body and embodied pregnancy experience. Similarly, both MacKendrick (2018) and Waggoner (2017) clearly demonstrate how responsibilities for ensuring the health and well-being of embryos, fetuses, children, and families are forms of gendered precautionary labor in which “safety first” approaches result in additional social control over women and their everyday lives, often despite equivocal empirical evidence supporting the benefits of such precautions.

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Truly demented

Jul 19th, 2023 5:36 pm | By

The mind reels.

So…it’s bad to make efforts to have a healthy (or “fit”) baby, because doing so may reflect eugenicist and biomedical moralist underpinnings.

What, I wondered, is biomedical moralism? Is it a label in common use? Not according to Google, which has never heard of it. I’m guessing it’s a label for thinking it’s better to have a healthy baby than a sick or weak or underweight one, and that it’s better … Read the rest



Something missing

Jul 19th, 2023 3:08 pm | By

NPR on the Women’s World Cup:

The U.S. will be looking to snag their third straight World Cup title — and its fifth overall.

The U.S. women’s national team (USWNT) has held the No. 1 spot in FIFA’s rankings for years, and is the odds-on favorite to win once again. But this year’s tournament is considered fairly wide open, with several teams having a decent shot at the title.

This time around, the U.S. squad is, on average, less experienced at the international level than it has been at previous tournaments. Several veterans whose experience had been counted on were left off the roster due to injuries, including Becky Sauerbrunn, Mallory Swanson, Samantha Mewis and Christen Press.

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You are all now neuter

Jul 19th, 2023 10:58 am | By

Is Arts Council Wales sniffing glue?

Gendered pronouns will be purged from official documentation by the Welsh government’s primary arts body, the Sunday Telegraph can reveal.

The Arts Council of Wales, the taxpayer-funded body responsible for supporting the arts on behalf of the devolved government, is set to purge male and female pronouns like “he/him” and “she/her” from the body’s official documentation, the Telegraph understands.

In place of gendered pronouns, the Arts Council will use gender-neutral pronouns “they/them”.

So no more “gendered” pronouns in the language of the Arts Council at all? Surely that’s insane? (And don’t call me Shirley.)

News of the policy arts comes after the Welsh government this year rolled out an LGBTQ+ Action Plan for

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The objective interests of the working class

Jul 19th, 2023 9:28 am | By

Yeah sure kid.

https://twitter.com/ConnorBrunniche/status/1681350628293984294

Marx would totally agree.… Read the rest



Grilling the workers

Jul 19th, 2023 9:21 am | By

Headline:

‘We are dying’: Houston workers protest new state law removing water break requirements

House Bill 2127, which takes effect on Sept. 1, will do away with local rules that require water breaks for construction workers. The cities of Austin and Dallas, for example, require 10-minute breaks every four hours. San Antonio officials had been considering a similar ordinance.

Ten minute breaks every four hours are not all that much, especially in blazing heat. (When I worked as a seasonal laborer for the Seattle Parks Department the rule was fifteen minute breaks every two hours – thanks to the union. Annoyingly, some crews liked to combine the breaks into one break first thing in the morning to go to … Read the rest



Is this thing on?

Jul 19th, 2023 6:56 am | By

It turns out that global warming means actual global warming, as in we’re in the frying pan and the burner is on. It means we’re accidentally cooking ourselves along with everything else.

Punishing heat waves gripped three continents on Tuesday, breaking records in cities around the Northern Hemisphere less than two weeks after the Earth recorded what scientists said were likely its hottest days in modern history.

Not just a little upward bump in average temperatures but raging heat waves that kill people by the thousands.

Firefighters in Greece scrambled to put out wildfires, as parched conditions raised the risk of more blazes throughout Europe. Beijing logged another day of 95-degree heat, and people in Hangzhou, another Chinese

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Sheer quantity

Jul 19th, 2023 6:32 am | By

There’s an irony here, or a cascade of ironies that has no visible terminus.

One of the thorniest questions raised by the possibility of another indictment would be how to schedule multiple trials in a way that satisfies the need to give Trump a fair trial but permits the wheels of justice to turn at reasonable speed. 

Oh gosh, doggone it, we can’t even figure out how to fit all these trials into the time we have. Why is that? Well, because the guy is such a prolific committer of crimes. The secret to success as a criminal: do so much of it at such a fast clip that the cops and prosecutors can’t even keep up with you. … Read the rest



Guest post: Trans persecution porn

Jul 18th, 2023 12:02 pm | By

Originally a comment by Sastra on He’ll rename himself Anne Frank next.

Atheist blogs have long noted the existence of what we’d call “persecution porn” coming from Christian conservatives. Liberal Secularists were feverishly plotting ways to destroy Christianity and choosing the easiest and only viable method: the use of force against Christians. Laws banning Bibles and camps “reeducating” the faithful were always on the verge of being implemented or had become fact in a fictional drama about the near future. Being asked to renounce Jesus by someone holding a gun to your head was a viable possibility: prepare yourself. How will you answer?

General consensus was that there were several factors motivating this lascivious dwelling on people “coming for … Read the rest



Massive

Jul 18th, 2023 11:20 am | By

Why would anyone think trans ideology is full of hatred of women?

https://twitter.com/IanGee2023/status/1681338434072322049… Read the rest


The indictments pile up

Jul 18th, 2023 10:49 am | By

Trump gets a target letter.

The fact that Trump had received yet another target letter from Jack Smith was a relatively close hold in his world. He went public after a media inquiry asking if he had received one, according to a person briefed on the matter.

We don’t know what charges Smith is considering bringing against Trump, but commentary from many lawyers — ranging from the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 riot to outsiders writing “model prosecution memos” — have focused in particular on the possibility of the attempted corrupt obstruction of an official proceeding, under Section 1512(c) of Title 18, and conspiracy to defraud the government under Section 371 of Title 18.

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