Watchdog to examine ‘implausible’ UK census trans figures

The statistics regulator is examining concerns that the data behind landmark census figures on the UK’s transgender population may be flawed.

Academics have queried findings by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) that 262,000 people identify as transgender in England and Wales.

Next look into how many people identify as a different species.

Michael Biggs, a professor of sociology at the University of Oxford, believes the question posed to record the gender identity of respondents may have confused those whose first language is not English.

He claimed it may be why the London boroughs of Newham and Brent, which have a significant percentage of residents who speak English as a second language,

This is what you get when you elect a hardened criminal chief executive.

The Manhattan district attorney on Tuesday sued Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio in an extraordinary step intended to keep congressional Republicans from interfering in the office’s criminal case against former President Donald J. Trump.

The 50-page suit, filed in federal court in the Southern District of New York, accuses Mr. Jordan of a “brazen and unconstitutional attack” on the prosecution of Mr. Trump and a “transparent campaign to intimidate and attack” the district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg. Mr. Bragg last week unveiled 34 felony charges against Mr. Trump that stem from the former president’s attempts to cover up a potential sex scandal during and after

Remember: always distort, re-word, ignore distinctions, exaggerate, lie, distort distort distort.

That’s how it’s done! McGovern said “We need to stop the virus of trans ideology” and Bozo says she “called trans people a virus.” Calling an ideology a virus is not calling the people infected by it a virus, just as calling Covid a virus is not calling the people infected by it a virus. The ideology is the virus, and it’s very very harmful to people, especially their brains and their critical faculties.

Willoughby has finally blocked me. I was surprised he hadn’t done it long ago; I’ve been a vocal non-admirer for a long time.… Read the rest

United Nations Women released a video last week profiling "Twisted Skeleton," a Venezuelan-Ecuadorian male dancer who identifies as a "non-binary trans girl."

UN Women has been active in pushing gender self-identification laws in recent years. pic.twitter.com/ZLTFiGWohD

— REDUXX (@ReduxxMag) April 11, 2023

UN Women is infuriating. Goddam quislings.… Read the rest

There it is, there’s the saying it out loud. He’s a better woman than women are because he had to fight for it. Women are like the children of millionaires while he is like the children of the scullery maid at Chatsworth.

Jean Hatchet points out that Dylan Mulvaney is mocking us and we don’t like it.

Shortly before this year-long, very public “transition”, Mulvaney performed a pilot video for his current lucrative act. In it he told the viewer that he “had trouble finding roles” so a friend had invented one for him, a “femme character”. His character wears a pink dress and pearls, white gloves and ankle socks. At this point Mulvaney must have been delighted to glimpse a potential new career path. It was a very savvy move for him to extend and develop this caricature of a 1950s woman. Now, just over a year later, Dylan Mulvaney has highly paid “partnerships” with a number of companies including Budweiser,

Originally a comment by Nullius in Verba on They don’t even get the initial euphoria.

Not that this hasn’t been discussed all along, of course, but still, learning that estrogen likely makes them more depressed than they already were…well, it can’t help the discourse much.

And so they get locked into chasing the dragon with ever increasing medical interventions.

That’s gotta cause some major dissonance. When I finally started getting real help for my social anxiety, the hope that my life would improve by itself gave me a sense of hope and elevated my view of myself, the world, and my place in it. I’m trying to imagine what kind of state I’d be in if the thing I … Read the rest

Oof, this is a painful read. It’s about the horrifying side effects of “wrong sex hormones on men” as the author puts it, and how systematically it’s been and continues to be concealed. I say it’s painful but I also recommend reading it: it’s very clarifying.

It starts with the effects on feelings as opposed to the body, and finds that they’re a wash for males.

I started to find out what can be expected from the medical interventions for young AMAB (assigned-male-at-birth) trans women like my son. And there, the researchers of the NEJM study are unequivocal about their findings: even among the variables that were finally reported, “depression and anxiety scores decreased…but not among those designated

Nancy Kelley’s war on lesbians isn’t popular with everyone.

This extraordinary thread demonstrates the dangers of only associating with people who share your beliefs – and who feel self-righteous about imposing them on society at large.

It also exemplifies betrayal: the TQ+ monolith’s betrayal of the gay and lesbian rights movement. https://t.co/z5VeXmxLQE

— Bev Jackson (@BevJacksonAuth) April 11, 2023

https://twitter.com/sueveneer/status/1645691153067515904

We need to now open the conversation about the end of Stonewall. Nobody voted for an organisation determined to harass lesbians and straight women or poison public discourse with lies while pushing gender extremism.

It’s a hate group and it must go. https://t.co/xsXUREA2iN

— Dennis Noel Kavanagh (@Jebadoo2) April 10, 2023

The idea that it's improper for lesbians to

Jim Jordan is a lawbreaker.

Legal analyst Glenn Kirschner has said that Representative Jim Jordan broke the law in New York state by threatening to investigate Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.

Jordan, an Ohio Republican who currently serves as chair of the House Judiciary Committee, vowed in the wake of Donald Trump‘s historic indictment to investigate Bragg’s conduct in bringing criminal charges against the former president, claiming that the district attorney’s actions were politically motivated. Pursuant to that goal, Jordan on Thursday issued a subpoena for testimony to former Manhattan prosecutor Mark Pomerantz, who worked on the Trump case before resigning last February.

In response, Bragg’s office released a statement decrying Jordan’s efforts as “an unprecedented campaign of

Originally a comment by Sackbut on We need to be asking “fair to whom?”

I think here again the distinction between “disproportionate advantage” and “category advantage”, as described by Jon Pike in his recent paper, become important. We don’t look at individual adults to see if they are within the skill capabilities of children before deciding whether these particular adults are allowed to participate in children’s sports, we have separate categories for children based on the idea that children have abilities and needs different from adults, and beyond that we don’t test any further. Age grouping is a category advantage. Sex grouping is also a category advantage.

NPR recently interviewed an endocrinologist (why not a sports physiologist?) who basically … Read the rest

So I decided to Learn More and went to their “Day of Pink” page.

Or is it the Courage Across Canada Tour page?

Or is it the Reopening With Pride page?

Or is it the United We Stand a Chance page?

It’s hard to tell. We’re offered all those on the front page. Much slogan, very little explanation.

But anyway, they do tell us some things, in pink lettering on a white page.

April 12, 2023 is the International Day of Pink!

Discrimination takes many shapes, whether it’s based on race, age, disabilities, gender or sexuality. The 2SLGBTQIA+ community is no stranger to the bullying and violence that stems from hateful beliefs. While progress has been made towards removing

Wat?

On Wednesday, April 12, students and staff are encouraged to wear pink in support of creating a more inclusive and diverse world and to stand in solidarity with the 2SLGBTQIA+ communities. Learn more: https://t.co/jFG6LKymes#DayOfPink2023 pic.twitter.com/P351x1Jxa7

— Toronto District School Board (@tdsb) April 10, 2023

What are they even talking about? How does “wearing pink” signify (or signal or advertise or promote or nudge or push) creating a more inclusive and diverse world? How does it at the same time stand in solidarity with the 2SLGBTQIAZMDJRVTPXMKLQ+ communities?

This time it’s not so much enraging as sick-making. It’s so smarmy, so creepy, so damp hand in yours and soft voice telling you you are loved when all you want to … Read the rest

One, ten, many Savita Halappanavars. The Washington Post has the details:

At 36, she’d already experienced a long line of miscarriages, but none of the pregnancies had been more than five weeks along. Now she had to deliver a nearly 16-week fetus — a daughter she’d planned to call Bunny.

And when she did she immediately started hemorrhaging.

She had intended to deliverthe fetus in a hospital, a doctor by her side. When her water broke the night before — at least six weeks ahead of when a fetus could survive on its own — she drove straight to the emergency room, where she said the doctor explained that she was experiencing pre-viability preterm prelabor rupture of the membranes

Genevieve Gluck at Reduxx:

A symposium in Nantes intended to raise awareness of the plight of Afghan and Iranian women has been postponed after trans activists threatened to violently ambush the event because of the presence of a gender critical speaker.

Step aside, Afghan and Iranian women, the much more important cause of men who pretend to be women needs all the space and attention and concern.

The Comité Laïcité République (CLR – Republic Secularism Committee), an organization dedicated to promoting secularism “as a force for reflection, dialogue, with a balanced tone,” issued a statement on April 5 announcing that their symposium – entitled “Women, Life, Freedom” after the mantra of the Iranian women’s protest movement – would be

The Nation for some reason decided to publish an article by a they/them called Frankie de la Cretaz who has nothing but contempt and hostility for women.

In 2021, the Department of Education announced a formal review of the way Title IX was enforced. The goal was ostensibly to come up with an interpretation of the law that protects transgender students from discrimination.

The proposal unveiled on Thursday, to put it mildly, does not meet that goal. Instead, under the cover of a ban on what it calls “one-size-fits-all” anti-trans policies, it makes explicit allowances for restrictions on trans participation in sports to ensure what it describes as “fairness in competition” and “preventing sports-related injury.” Even observers inclined to be

Nancy Kelley underlines her contempt for women.

But the EHRC doesn’t say ‘what's the policy intent here?’ or even ‘what's the *specific* matter you are seeking advice on?’ (these would be very normal responses to such a broad letter). It *assumes* a policy intent and writes back on the basis of those assumptions.

— Nancy Kelley (@Nancy_M_K) April 10, 2023

To make it easier to exclude trans lesbians from lesbian support groups.
To make it easier to exclude trans women from women’s book clubs
To make it easier to exclude trans women from women only shortlists

— Nancy Kelley (@Nancy_M_K) April 10, 2023

That is, to make it possible to exclude MEN from lesbian support groups, women’s book clubs, … Read the rest

News from Tennessee:

The Tennessee statehouse has expelled two Democratic politicians who led a gun control protest that halted legislative proceedings last week. In a rare move, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives voted 72-25 to expel Justin Jones and 69-26 to remove Justin Pearson.

But an expulsion vote failed against a third Democratic lawmaker, Gloria Johnson, who also joined the protest. Republicans said the trio had brought “disorder and dishonour to the House”.

Republicans kicked out two elected Representatives of the other party because they felt like it.

Republicans said the trio had brought “disorder and dishonour to the House”. Crowds of protesters have attended the State Capitol since a school shooting. The 27 March attack at Nashville’s Covenant

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Thanks for participating peacefully.

She added: “Diversity promotes critical discussions, new understandings and enriches the academic experience. But we may also find ourselves exposed to divergent views and even views we find personally abhorrent.”

Please describe in detail how the fact (or even the idea) that men can’t be women is “personally abhorrent.” Please explain how this is no more than a “divergent view” that must be shouted down. Does not the truth of this simple statement have any bearing at all on the discussion?

The reality of sex is no more a “divergent view” than the existence of rain and sunshine. See how far you get protesting them. … Read the rest

Where they make a desert and call it peace (ubi solitudinem faciunt pacem appelant – Tacitus).

Riley Gaines hit out at [sharply criticized] San Francisco State University (SFSU) after an email was sent to all students thanking those who “participated peacefully in Thursday evening’s event” when demonstrators stormed a talk being held by Gaines and allegedly physically assaulted her.

Hey students thanks for not murdering Riley Gaines. Nice one.

A video posted on social media showed Gaines being escorted to safety by police after dozens of protestors got inside the venue, with the ex-college athlete claiming she was “physically hit twice by a man,” and trapped in an empty classroom for three hours.

Ya see that’s participating peacefully. She’s not … Read the rest