All entries by this author

Guest post: A good teacher wouldn’t do this

Feb 19th, 2023 3:22 pm | By

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on It’s a disguise.

So wearing it in classroom settings in order to force the participation of minors legally required to be in school (a captive audience) is the whole point. The discomfort and distress of reliably accessible gatherings of kids, over whom he excercizes authority (granted him by people who could easily take it away), is the whole point of the operation. If this core, essential, personal identity is so integral to his being, why does he drop it as soon as he’s away from an audience? Call me a closed-minded transphobe, but this looks a lot more like public performance of a fetish than the right to personal expression … Read the rest



It’s a disguise

Feb 19th, 2023 11:45 am | By

It turns out that the gigantic breasts guy doesn’t wear them as part of his “transition”; it turns out he wears them some of the time, to…make a point? Surprise the crows? Exercise those hard to reach muscles?

While parents have raged about transgender teacher Kayla Lemieux being allowed to wear Z-cup prosthetics in front of students, the shop teacher was spotted ditching the controversial fetishistic fashion after work and stepping out in public dressed as a man.

The teacher — who until a few years ago went by the name Kerry — left Ontario’s Oakville Trafalgar High School this week wearing the gigantic breasts, a blond wig and glasses, but it wasn’t long until the cartoonish clothing

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A renowned maker of threats

Feb 19th, 2023 11:27 am | By

Gretchen Felker-Martin is on the job again.

A renowned transgender horror author who signed a letter last week condemning The New York Times’s coverage of trans issues has tweeted that she wants to slit J.K. Rowling‘s throat.

Gretchen Felker-Martin named a series of writers she accused of transphobia – including Rowling – in a tweet sent on February 12. She added: ‘If they all had one throat, man.’

Another writer she railed against, journalist Jesse Singal, condemned Felker-Martin for making the death threat, and said she has a long history of making threats of violence.

In Felker-Martin’s debut novel, Manhunt, published in February 2022, Rowling is murdered by being burned alive. 

That’s … Read the rest



Not on track

Feb 19th, 2023 9:53 am | By

The UN’s 2022 report on gender equality:

The latest available Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5 data show that the world is not on track to achieve gender equality by 2030.

Or any other date.

COVID-19 and the backlash against women’s sexual and reproductive health and rights are further diminishing the outlook for gender equality. Violence against women remains high; global health, climate, and humanitarian crises have further increased risks of violence, especially for the most vulnerable women and girls; and women feel more unsafe than they did before the pandemic. Women’s representation in positions of power and decision-making remains below parity.

Also (which they don’t say) women’s rights are being further eroded by gender ideology and all that goes … Read the rest



More women than men

Feb 19th, 2023 9:41 am | By

So sometimes the UN does know which people are women. Unless there’s an unspoken “including/especially trans women” here.

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Identifying as worth $42k

Feb 19th, 2023 7:00 am | By

News out of Florida:

Art lovers in Miami looked on in horror on Thursday night, when a collector accidentally knocked a $42,000 (£34,870) sculpture by US pop artist Jeff Koons to the ground.

Oh no, $42,000 gone, just like that!

The statue – one of Koons’ iconic Dog Balloons – smashed into tiny shards, and had to be swept into dustpans by gallery staff.

Luckily for the woman, the piece is covered by insurance, Bénédicte Caluch, an art advisor with Bel-Air Fine Art galleries which represents the sculpture, said.

Whew, that’s a relief!

But what I want to know is, in what sense was the piece actually “worth” 42k?

In the sense that someone might be willing to … Read the rest



Treat all patients as gender-neutral

Feb 18th, 2023 4:31 pm | By

The usual apologies for the Mail, but it reports that medical people are being told to talk in Gender Neutral unless told otherwise. 1% of people claim to be Gender Interesting so everyone has to be confused by doctors and nurses carefully avoiding calling them women or men.

Steve Barclay last night ordered an urgent investigation into new guidelines that tell NHS staff to treat all patients as gender-neutral.

Nobody is gender-neutral, so it’s bonkers to treat patients as gender-neutral because a few wannabe originals pretend they’re neither women nor men.

It instructs doctors and nurses not to use phrases such as ‘Mr’ and ‘Mrs’ or ‘he’ and ‘she’ until a patient has confirmed their gender identity.

Mind you, … Read the rest



Such messages prove Fox brass knew

Feb 18th, 2023 11:43 am | By

There is textual evidence that Fox knowingly lies.

What Fox’s loyal viewers wanted to watch — and what Fox News was willing to do to keep them — emerged this week as a central question in a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit brought against the network by Dominion Voting Systems.

A stunning cache of internal correspondence and deposition testimony obtained by the software company and made public on Thursday in a Delaware court filing showed high-level Fox executives and on-air stars privately agonizing over the wild and false claims of a stolen election that Trump allies promoted on Fox airwaves in the weeks after the 2020 election. “Sidney Powell is lying,” prime-time star Tucker Carlson wrote to his producer about

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Good guess

Feb 18th, 2023 10:35 am | By

Trans woman Juno Dawson is angry at his MP.

https://twitter.com/junodawson/status/1626688287384522752

He guesses to this man he does not count as a vulnerable woman. Well of course he doesn’t, because he’s a man. Of course he’s not “vulnerable” in the way women are. In other ways he may be, but not the ways specific to women.

The names he childishly smeared out are Kathleen Stock and Helen Joyce. More power to their elbows.… Read the rest



Heat, homelessness, drugs

Feb 18th, 2023 10:06 am | By

Phoenix is already lethal.

America’s fifth biggest city has always been hot, but day and night temperatures have been rising due to global heating and the city’s unchecked development, which has created a sprawling urban heat island that has literally become unliveable for some residents. In the past three years, 911 calls and emergency room visits for heat-related emergencies have skyrocketed and more than a thousand people have died from extreme heat.

I did not know that. You’d think it would prompt a mass exodus.

The city is scattered with cooling centres – air conditioned places where residents can go to cool down – but clearly this isn’t working for many people. I wanted to spend a good

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Guest post: Social aspects of science

Feb 18th, 2023 9:23 am | By

Originally a comment by Mike Haubrich on Will the real pseudoscience please stand up.

I’ve been studying social aspects of science as a layperson for at least 25 years, some college courses before that, and through discussions with working scientists on my podcast since, and just chatting with Greg Laden. I don’t claim to be an expert on science by any means, since I have limited practical experience designing and conducting experiments only when they are part of an undergraduate course and so that just gives basic context of how some science works. But it’s such a broad area of investigation, that even among working scientists there are concepts in the philosophy of science that they don’t accept or … Read the rest



A good illustration

Feb 18th, 2023 7:13 am | By

I haven’t read much Roald Dahl because I was put off by his unabashed hatred of women decades ago.

Hatred of women never goes … Read the rest



Guest post: How about an admission that humans can’t change sex?

Feb 18th, 2023 6:56 am | By

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Will the real pseudoscience please stand up.

…an eerily familiar mix of pseudoscience and euphemistic, charged language…

Like bleeders, uterus-havers, clownfish, cis and TERF? Or is the problem the fact the NYT didn’t use their preferred terms like bleeders, uterus-havers, cis and TERF?

…while publishing reporting on trans children that omits relevant information about its sources.

Or maybe the Times reported on the contoversy surrounding how best to treat dysphoric children, and discussed options other than just “gender affirming” care. And as for the omission of “relevant information,” how about an admission that humans can’t change sex? Call me mad, but that seems somewhat relevant to me. And what about … Read the rest



Let’s talk about balloons though

Feb 18th, 2023 6:09 am | By

It seems Buttigieg has been neglecting his job.

On the very day that DeWine was uttering these dire words [telling people to evacuate the area after the East Palestine train disaster], Buttigieg appeared on three Sunday news shows: CNN’s State of the Union, NBC’s Meet the Press, and ABC’s This Week. Remarkably, on none of these programs was Buttigieg asked about the ongoing East Palestine disaster—despite the fact that, as transportation secretary, regulating train safety is one of his responsibilities. Nor did Buttigieg feel it incumbent on himself to raise the issue and offer what guidance and assurances he could. Instead, Buttigieg’s ubiquitous TV appearances were taken up with the transparently hyped-up issue of a

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They do not welcome and will not tolerate

Feb 17th, 2023 4:16 pm | By

Andrew Sullivan on That Letter.

[T]his week, we saw another campus maneuver: an open letter from a thousand or so New York Times contributors, accusing the NYT of “follow[ing] the lead of far-right hate groups” in its coverage of transgender issues. Other campus tactics: a loud demo outside; alliance between insiders and outsider activists; public shaming of named journalists; accusations that the NYT is a “workplace made hostile by bias” (the now-familiar HR gambit); and non-negotiable demands for even more hiring solely on the basis of identity and ideology.

It’s an echo of Evergreen and Yale and Middlebury and Reed. The ploys are repeated because they work and there’s no downside. And almost all the university presidents caved.

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The letter

Feb 17th, 2023 4:00 pm | By

The letter is available at the elegantly short address nyletter.com.

We write to you as a collective of New York Times contributors with serious concerns about editorial bias in the newspaper’s reporting on transgender, non⁠-⁠binary, and gender nonconforming people.

Plenty of reporters at the Times cover trans issues fairly. Their work is eclipsed, however, by what one journalist has calculated as over 15,000 words of front⁠-⁠page Times coverage debating the propriety of medical care for trans children published in the last eight months alone.

15 thousand in eight months? So under two thousand a month? That’s not a lot. That’s not even close to a lot. An article or two per month. It’s a pressing issue, it’s in the … Read the rest



Will the real pseudoscience please stand up

Feb 17th, 2023 3:34 pm | By

Another campaign / protest / open letter / list of demands, this time aimed at the New York Times.

The New York Times has been accused by its own writers of fomenting “bigotry and pseudoscience” against trans people in the latest controversy to grip one of America’s biggest-selling newspapers.

Pseudoscience? Because what, trans ideology is based on such authentic genuine non-counterfeit not at all pseudo-type science?

More than 180 contributors, including Sex and The City actress Cynthia Dixon, writer Lena Dunham and whistleblower Chelsea Manning, have penned a letter raising “serious concerns” about the newspaper’s reporting on transgender, non-binary and gender nonconforming people.

Oh no, not Cynthia Dixon and Lena Dunham. How will the Times survive?

[The letter]

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The player has previously caused injuries

Feb 17th, 2023 12:33 pm | By

Because female people don’t matter.

Six first-class counties are demanding urgent answers from the England and Wales Cricket Board as to why a middle-aged player who transitioned from a man to a woman is being allowed to compete against girls as young as 12.

A two-fer. Not just a man, but middle-aged. Not just decades older, but male.

One letter from a coach claims the player “hits the ball harder than any other I have seen in the league”.

Gee I wonder what could possibly explain that.

It is understood that the player has previously caused injuries, although inadvertently, including one to an umpire and another to an opponent at county trials who was left unable to play for

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Some residents have reported

Feb 17th, 2023 11:15 am | By

NPR yesterday on the East Palestine disaster:

Some residents have reported headaches and rashes in the days since the derailment. And many have expressed frustration at what they say is a lack of answers from the railroad company and public officials.

I suspect the lack of answers is because the answers don’t make the railroad company or public officials look responsible or competent. “We could answer, but then you would come at us with pitchforks.”

On Wednesday night, hundreds of East Palestine residents crowded into a high school gym to press state and local officials for answers about air and water testing and the risks of long-term exposure.

“Why are people getting sick if there’s nothing in the air

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Sitting ducks told to continue sitting

Feb 17th, 2023 10:34 am | By

Guy loiters in female changing room to watch young girls getting naked. Staff says nothing can be done.

Janayh Wright, a photographer and mother of three, spoke to Reduxx about her own encounter with the man — one she says she had heard about before interacting with [him] herself. Wright explains that she was aware of rumors that a male had been using the women’s facilities at the Nanaimo Aquatic Centre from other parents, some of whom said they had lodged complaints with both staff and local police.

On February 3, Wright was visiting the pool with her daughter and niece. She told Reduxx that she would typically wait for her daughter outside of the changing room, but decided

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