More Silence the Woman at Oxford:

More than 40 academics – including Prof Richard Dawkins, the evolutionary biologist, and Prof Nigel Biggar, the theologian – have intervened in support of a planned appearance at the Oxford Union by Prof Kathleen Stock, a leading feminist, in a letter to The Telegraph.

In the biggest row to erupt at the university since Rhodes Must Fall, students have tried to cancel Prof Stock’s talk – claiming that she is transphobic for her view that it is fiction to claim “transwomen are women”.

It’s a funny thing that none of the other movements for justice or rights or equality or whatever you want to call them have been fiction-based. Workers’ movements … Read the rest

UN Women is confused. Very, very confused.

Women’s rights are NOT negotiable.

Women and girls EVERYWHERE deserve to live a life of dignity and respect. Period.

Are you with us? pic.twitter.com/m78kTRUZoJ

— UN Women (@UN_Women) May 12, 2023

Women’s rights are NOT negotiable, they say, yet they cheerfully hand them over to men just because the men say they are women, and they ignore all the women who object. If our rights are not negotiable why is the UN giving them to men who claim to be women?

Women are Adult Human Females

The rights of Adult Human Females have been hard fought for & still need fighting for around the globe

Shame on you @UN_Women for making that harder

2.2 million views. 180 approvals.

Take a hint, Nancy https://t.co/HUBEzLm1b9 pic.twitter.com/oATLZSdqfA

— nunya🦅🐁🐀🐁🐀🐁🦅 (@nunya33369999) May 16, 2023

Here’s Nancy’s “tiger girl”.
Imagine a young woman feeling the full force of him steamrolling into her. https://t.co/6LWJcAtG4t pic.twitter.com/lahKj8jqDD

— Susan Flint (@Hypnoteq) May 16, 2023

2m views & 169 likes. It's over https://t.co/oTrGaslqXJ pic.twitter.com/Gr3Gn1lYbQ

— Stuart (@stuartf100) May 16, 2023

2 million https://t.co/mTXimQe5UF

— Dennis Noel Kavanagh (@Jebadoo2) May 16, 2023

Two point two million now.… Read the rest

Classic “no you are.”

Transphobes are defying reality.@PhilosophyTube | @AyoCaesar pic.twitter.com/h0lj0vPRCJ

— Novara Media (@novaramedia) May 16, 2023

… Read the rest

J. Michael Bailey asks why his gender research is being cancelled.

Updating to add: H/t Mostly Cloudy

Since my academic paper on Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria was published last month, it has been downloaded more than 38,000 times and is ranked in the top percentile of similar articles in terms of online attention. One might think that the academic society associated with the journal — the International Academy of Sex Research — would be delighted. Instead, its officers are trying to cancel the article.

…

Across the industrialised West, there has been an explosion of gender dysphoria among adolescent girls in recent years. In England, for example, annual referrals for child and adolescent gender dysphoria treatment grew in

Wait what? There’s an environment, and it needs protection? Who knew?

The sleeping giant of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has stirred.

In the past month, an avalanche of anti-pollution rules, targeting everything from toxic drinking water to planet-heating gases in the atmosphere, have been issued by the agency. Belatedly, the sizable weight of the US federal government is being thrown at longstanding environmental crises, including the climate emergency.

On Thursday, the EPA’s month of frenzied activity was crowned by the toughest ever limits upon carbon pollution from America’s power sector, with large, existing coal and gas plants told they must slash their emissions by 90% or face being shut down.

Not just this month though.

In April, new

Reduxx reports:

A man who identifies as transgender and has a disturbing criminal record is suing a New York yoga studio for $5 million in compensation after he alleges employees asked him to use the men’s restroom instead of the women’s. Dylan Miles, who uses the name Ali Miles, filed the discrimination suit against Chelsea Traditional Hot Yoga on May 15.

Using a mixture of masculine and feminine pronouns to refer to himself, Miles alleges that the personnel at Chelsea Yoga “deprived [him] of his civil rights because he is gay, undergoing a gender transition, and because Miles does not conform to … gender-based preferences, expectations, or stereotypes about how a man/woman should dress and conduct himself/herself.”

There is … Read the rest

Cold rage for Nancy Kelley.

Absolutely disgusting – a woman touting for money to support allowing men to compete in women's RUGBY – where not only fairness but safety are at issue. Letting adult male bodies into women's rugby will mean broken necks, but that's neither here nor there for our Nance. https://t.co/5SNtAl5IFL

— Helen Joyce (@HJoyceGender) May 16, 2023

Your internalised misogyny and homophobia is now a public danger Nancy – the charity commission need to act to remove you before you crowdfund a girl’s broken neck. I’m quite serious about this. You are a danger to girls. https://t.co/mTXimQe5UF

— Dennis Noel Kavanagh (@Jebadoo2) May 16, 2023

I have a query: if a woman player gets her neck broken

Who is on Team Julie-Anne Bloke?

Nancy Kelley of course.

If you can, support @tigergirl_70 in her fight for an inclusive rugby game #MakeSportEveronesGame https://t.co/XAU7hOyBPm

— Nancy Kelley (@Nancy_M_K) May 13, 2023

Replies are turned off; quote tweets are scathing; ratio is vast.

Crowd justice:

Fighting the ban on trans women in rugby

by Julie-Anne Curtiss

Curtiss blurbs himself:

I am a human being. Beyond that I am a transgender woman & believe that trans-rights are human rights. The purpose of this campaign is to challenge the legitimacy of RFU’s ban on trans-women in rugby.

Trans people should have human rights as all humans should. Men playing women’s rugby is not a human right.

Who am I

First and foremost, I am a human being. I happen to love playing rugby. I also happen to be trans. Following transition, I started playing rugby for an amateur women’s club. Anyone who loves sport will know how much community is built within a team: for

The hostile replies on The Nation’s tweet of that ridiculous article defending “Lia” Thomas and accusing women of “frenzy” continue to pile up. Could it break the record for disastrous ratio? Confidence is high.

pic.twitter.com/g5SMFBdQPx

— Colin Wright (@SwipeWright) May 15, 2023

It is entirely normal to boo sports cheats. Explain the difference between a man named William cheating at women's sports and a man named Lia cheating at women's sports, using facts

— Matt Osborne (@OsborneInk) May 13, 2023

https://twitter.com/GoodyCorvid/status/1657657070957502464

Yeesh that photo. I don’t think I’d seen that one before.… Read the rest

Reduxx reports:

Japan’s longest-running rape crisis center has been declared ineligible to receive public funding following statements made by the facility’s director which were deemed by government officials to be discriminatory against males who identify as transgender.

So government officials punish a rape crisis center for not “including” males. Kind of misses the point of having a rape crisis center at all, if you ask me.

Tokyo’s Rape Crisis Center was founded in 1983 by six women, half of whom were survivors of sexual assault. Michiko Orita, one of the founders, first confirmed the punitive measure during a meeting held last year in May organized by women’s rights campaign group Save Women’s Spaces, which was primarily concerned with

Yes indeed, the thing to do when the planet is relentlessly heating up such that future humans are going to have a giant nightmare to deal with is have more children.

A Conservative MP has claimed the UK’s low birthrate is the most pressing policy issue of the generation and is caused in part by “cultural Marxism” stripping young people of any hope, at the start of a populist-tinged conference in London.

Addressing the National Conservatism gathering, run by a US-based thinktank, Miriam Cates said western countries faced an existential threat from falling reproduction…

Of course that depends on how you define “existential.” I assume she means “western countries” are going to change a lot because people from … Read the rest

Interesting…

Victorian Liberal leader @JohnPesutto when asked by @3AWNeilMitchell today “what is a woman?”:
“Well, it’s an adult human female, but Neil our laws have changed and attitudes are changing where there are people now who identify differently to their biological sex. And what I have… https://t.co/PGaGRCYbQ7

— Fiona M (@FionaJaneMurray) May 15, 2023

“Well, it’s an adult human female, but Neil our laws have changed and attitudes are changing where there are people now who identify differently to their biological sex. And what I have always wanted is to respect that and include people.”

This “include” thing – it’s a puzzler. Sometimes “include” is neutral and passionless. You can include tomatoes on your shopping list, you can include socks … Read the rest

Ben Appel in spiked on The New Homophobia:

In 2017, at the age of 33, I enrolled at Columbia University, New York to complete my undergraduate degree. There, I was shocked to discover how gay activism had evolved since marriage equality became the law of the land. The focus was now entirely on personal pronouns and on being ‘queer’. My classmates labelled me ‘cis’, short for cisgender. I didn’t even know what it meant. All I knew was that they called me ‘cis’ in the same cadence that the seventh graders had called me ‘fag’.

Oh but that can’t be right. Cis is to trans as straight is to gay, isn’t it? No, it isn’t, but we’re supposed to … Read the rest

It seems that despite all this bravado and sneering and abuse, Trump is still in deep trouble.

But in the coming months it’s going to get a lot harder for the former, and possibly future, American president to spin his legal problems as political persecution by Democratic elitists. Investigations against him are mounting, and even more troubled legal waters lie ahead for Trump – and some of his acolytes.

Indictments in conservative Georgia are coming down the line and many of the key witnesses against Trump will be his fellow Republicans, including some who helped him try to rig the 2020 election.

And we can be confident about this because they’ll testify to protect themselves.

Similarly, investigations by

Musk’s Twitter wants the world to burn.

Some of the UK’s top scientists are struggling to deal with what they describe as a huge rise in abuse from climate crisis deniers on Twitter since the social media platform was taken over by Elon Musk last year.

Since then, key figures who ensured “trusted” content was prioritised have been sacked, according to one scientist, and Twitter’s sustainability arm has vanished. At the same time several users with millions of followers who propagate false statements about the climate emergency, including Donald Trump and rightwing culture warrior Jordan Peterson, have had their accounts reinstated.

Climate scientists say the change has been stark, and they are fighting to make themselves heard over a

Confusing.

Very touching. He always finds the right tone on these special occasions. pic.twitter.com/R3VaiM4lra

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) May 14, 2023

The Radical Left Fascists?

Also, why the commas before and after “quickly”? They don’t, make, any sense.… Read the rest

Retorts on the bird.

You are an absolute joke. You have abandoned women, if you ever cared about us in the first place. I suppose now true colors are being shown. Men, no matter how they ID, have physical advantage over women. That will nvr change. You argue for the end of women's sport.

— Free Speech is Paramount. LGB ✂️ TQ (@Lo_a_Rare_Nag) May 14, 2023

https://twitter.com/BDimyon/status/1657667126176493574 … Read the rest

On the bright side – that appalling article in The Nation is getting absolutely hosed, both on Twitter and in comments on the article. The more scathing the comment the more upvotes it gets. The rare comment that agrees with the article gets a mass of downvotes. This is good news.

KEITH DANISH says:

May 12, 2023 at 1:24 pm

Sad to see women-hating made respectable.

204 approve, 7 disapprove.

nina rodrigues says:

May 12, 2023 at 7:22 pm

“There is no evidence that trans women have an unfair advantage over the others.” Oh please, there are very good reasons why men cannot compete with women in sports. Darts? Perhaps? I’m not transphobic. I know trans women and trans men.