India Willoughby, dressed up in a little-girl round-collared blouse with puffy sleeves, says how persecuted he is.

'The difference is with these letters, there's obviously been a degree of effort and time & thought put into them, they've both been hand delivered.'

Broadcaster, @IndiaWilloughby talks about receiving a death threat letter, centred round the trans issue. pic.twitter.com/eHNGXHahzS

— Good Morning Britain (@GMB) February 23, 2023

…and it’s just become so toxic, it’s horrible, I feel like this government have put a target on my back, I belong to nought point two percent of the population, which is like literally nothing at all – I feel hunted now, every story that appears in the British media is about trans people being

Why did Trump go to East Palestine? To pretend to be the guy who cares about East Palestine and the people who live there and the people who live in all the places like East Palestine.

Donald Trump is visiting the small Ohio town reeling from the toxic fallout of a Norfolk Southern Corp. train derailment in the hope of capitalizing politically on residents’ anger about the initial response by the Biden administration. But the trip also highlights the ex-president’s rolling back of rules that former regulators say could have improved rail safety.

He bragged constantly about getting rid of all the pesky regulations, as if they were swarms of gnats as opposed to measures to protect human health and … Read the rest

The Post on the Times:

The New York Times is racked with internal dissent over internal dissent — a development stemming from multiple open letters sent last week to newspaper management taking issue with the paper’s recent coverage of transgender youth. The uproar reflects the pressures of managing coverage of a sensitive topic at a time when media criticism is flourishing everywhere.

The thing is…the topic isn’t just “sensitive”; it’s also…bizarre. An outlier. More bluntly, childish.

I was thinking the same thing while reading that dopy piece in The New Republic. I was thinking about how weird it is seeing adult publications and outlets like TNR and the Post and the Times, and the Guardian and the BBC and … Read the rest

The New Republic has a polemic by a trans activist named Brynn Tannehill.

So far this year, Republicans have filed over 300 anti-transgender bills at the state and federal levels, and we haven’t even reached the end of February…The American Principles Project, a religious conservative think tank and super PAC whose goal is to ban all transition-related health care (even for adults), is making a full-court press on Republican candidates to use transgender people as the number one talking point during the 2024 election cycle.

It always relies on the language tricks. “Transition-related health care” isn’t health care as normally understood at all, it’s something quite different. It’s medical intervention to make people’s bodies fit their fantasies about their … Read the rest

There are always so many theological puzzles with these things.

Why should fundy Christians be ruling the country and passing the laws and re-enslaving women?

Why, because they’re right, of course.

How do they know they’re right?

God said so! It’s all in the bible!

But other bible-readers and god-obeyers have different views.

They’re wrong!

How do you know they’re wrong?

God said so! It’s all in the bible!

Then why doesn’t god do something about them? Why doesn’t god put a stop to the wrong believers – or convince them that they’re wrong? God can do anything, so why doesn’t he (you do consider him a he, right?) just impose his will? Why allow all this error to flourish? … Read the rest

Christian Nationalism is flexing its theocratic muscles.

Long a shadowy force in American politics, Christian Nationalism is having a coming out party. The movement seeks a fusion of fundamentalist theology with American civic life. “They believe that this country was founded for Christians like them, generally natural-born citizens and white,” says Andrew Whitehead, author of Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States. Whitehead emphasizes that the danger of Christian Nationalism to democracy is that the movement “sees no room for compromise — their vision must be the one that comes to pass.”

Because their vision is god’s vision and obviously there’s no compromising with god’s vision – god is absolute so god’s vision is also … Read the rest

Dang that Marjorie Taylor Greene really has her eye on the ball.

Yessir!! That’s what matters!!

Zelensky dresses the way he does in solidarity with the soldiers resisting Putin’s invasion. MTG of course knows that. What’s her point? That Zelensky is the bad guy and Putin is the exquisitely dressed hero? She’s going with that?… Read the rest

Can Laurie Penny really be this stupid? Surely not?

Perhaps that's part of why so many people find the concept so uncomfortable.

— Laurie Penny (@PennyRed) February 19, 2023

As you can see, the origin is a conversation from last April, which got woken up today. I found LP’s reply as silly as most of her replies to most things, so I felt compelled to contradict her.

No it's why so many people find it superfluous.
"I'm NB because I don't identify with all the rules of my gender."
"You don't say! Neither does anyone else!!"

— Ophelia Benson (@OpheliaBenson) February 23, 2023

Her response? Oyyyyyy

That tweet.

— Ophelia Benson (@OpheliaBenson) February 24, 2023

Oh ffs. Are you

Ok so the solution to my problem a few hours ago is excerpts.

It shall be so.

tigger_the_wing:

The hospital had a section for people who suffered severe traumatic brain injury. These people were particularly interesting. As their brains healed and grew new connections, and they learned to do literally everything all over again they became totally different people. They had no memories of their previous lives; those stories and photos which their families and friends showed them might as well have happened to someone else. I’ve had parents crying in my taxi because the son or daughter they thought would die a few years earlier…had returned to them a complete stranger.

Mike Haubrich:

Being transgender

Kevin McCarthy gave a whole lot of Capitol Hill riot footage to Tucker Carlson.

US House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy is under fire for giving thousands of hours of footage from the Capitol riot to a Fox News host.

…

Access to the video has until now been restricted mainly to a congressional committee and lawyers for the rioters.

During his show on Monday, Carlson said: “Some of our smartest producers have been looking at this stuff and trying to figure out what it means and how it contradicts or not the story we’ve been told for more than two years. We think already in some ways that it does contradict that story.”

Great. Fantastic. We’re being governed … Read the rest

I hate it when we (the non-Fox part of the world) give Fox ammunition.

A children’s “chapter book series about women who spoke up and rose up against the odds” and is targeted at kids ages 6 to 9 years old is set to release a book about Rachel Levine, the first openly transgender federal official confirmed by the U.S. Senate in 2021 who is now the new assistant secretary at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). 

Children’s book series about women who spoke up to do a book about a man. Progress!!!

Here’s me speaking up: this is bullshit.

The book, which includes an introduction from Chelsea Clinton, states it is the “perfect choice for kids

Remember Sam Brinton, the “non-binary” nuclear waste official who got busted for stealing luggage at airports?

One of his victims spotted him wearing her stuff.

pic.twitter.com/uEXVciYTUY

— asyakhamsin (@asyakhamsin1) February 23, 2023

That’s Sam in the photo on the right, carrying the TastyFreeze and wearing the beautiful top she designed and wore.… Read the rest

That whole Don Lemon thing? CNN talking head telling millions that women become worthless in their 40s? Pfft. Not a problem.

If you turned on CNN on Wednesday morning curious to see how Don Lemon would address his mini sexism scandal after his mini sabbatical and his “formal training,” the answer is that he wouldn’t address it, at least not on air.

A few moments before his show began, the news anchor tweeted that he appreciated “the opportunity to be back” and, to his colleagues and viewers, wrote, “I’ve heard you, I’m learning from you, and I’m committed to doing better.” Once “CNN This Morning” started, though, it was business as usual. Co-host Kaitlan Collins reported from

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Black and white thinking.

On the trans issue the thing I find most checkable in my thinking is what it feels like. Maybe the feeling is so intense, so agonizing, so impossible to get rid of, that…well, that what?

But at any rate, I can agree that I don’t fully understand what it feels like.

Neither can I. On the other hand, just because it feels like something doesn’t mean that’s what it is. People are not always the best judge of their own experiences. The explanations we reach for first might not be correct. We can be mistaken, or fooled; we can dream or hallucinate. Our subjectivity is … Read the rest

Originally a pair of comments by Tim Harris on Imperialism: not THAT bad.

I came across a historian (English) who was educated at Cambridge, and taught at universities outside Britain; he was much exercised by anyone paying attention to slavery, and said the proper field of interest should be colonial history, by which he appeared to mean rehearsing the old tales of Clive of India, Cecil Rhodes et al. I remarked that slavery was an integral part of colonialism so that I did not see how it could be ignored. I find nothing positive, morally or otherwise, about slavery, the constant use of violence, and the extreme violence that was used if slaves rebelled; and I find nothing positive … Read the rest

Trump went to East Palestine Ohio today and…handed out bottles of Trump-brand water. No word on whether he threw them or not.

In what one former GOP official told Politico was a “clear” political stunt, former President Donald Trump visited East Palestine on Wednesday, nearly three weeks after a catastrophic train derailment. The trip also comes one day ahead of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s own trip to the Ohio town.

And two years and six weeks after Trump tried to incite a mob to hand him the election he lost.

In his remarks, he seized the opportunity to bash Buttigieg, saying he “should’ve been here already,” and President Joe Biden, advising him: “Get over here.” The former president

CNN outdoes even the Guardian. It’s breathtaking how malicious and ugly this is:

For years, J.K. Rowling, one of the best-selling authors of all time, has made inflammatory comments about transgender people, particularly trans women, using dehumanizing language and baselessly accusing them of harming cisgender women. Her words have disappointed legions of “Harry Potter” fans and even the stars who brought Rowling’s books to life.

It’s “for years” only in the most literal sense, i.e. more than one year. The comments are “inflammatory” only in the sense that easily incensed people like “Scottie Andrew,” the author of this inflammatory piece, urge each other to be inflamed about them. “Dehumanizing language” is a straight-up lie. It’s also a lie to … Read the rest

Is that another crack in the foundation?

Police Scotland has withdrawn from a diversity scheme run by Stonewall, the controversial gay and transgender rights group.

The controversial group that used to campaign for gay rights but now campaigns for trans rights instead, often at the expense of gay rights.

The charity has been criticised for its stance on trans issues. Police Scotland is understood to be the first high-profile Scottish public body to have quit the scheme, which has attracted the support of the Scottish government — currently 89th on Stonewall’s top 100 employers index.

The fanatical, destroy everything else support of the Scottish government.

In 2021, the BBC announced its withdrawal from Stonewall’s diversity champions scheme after concerns

The BBC does a much more adult job of reporting on Prime Suspect JKR’s conversation with Megan Phelps-Roper.

Rowling has attracted extensive criticism for a series of comments voicing concerns about how trans issues affect women’s rights, and her opposition to Scotland’s gender recognition bill.

How refreshing it is to see a news outlet say that in a way that doesn’t nudge the reader to recoil in shock at a woman’s defense of women’s rights.

Her position has been interpreted by some as transphobic, leading to calls for a boycott of the Harry Potter franchise…

By some. Not all, not most, not even many, just some.

The Beeb even allows her to make a persuasive, thoughtful case.

Rowling later said

The Guardian has a piece about JK Rowling’s life with her abusive first husband, and to make up for such a twanzphobic act, goes on to abuse her. Part One: here’s how bad it was; Part Two: here’s how bad she is. The two takes don’t mesh very well – the transition is awkward.

The Harry Potter author JK Rowling has spoken about the abuse she suffered at the hands of her former husband, saying he tried to lock away the unpublished manuscript of the series’ first book to stop her leaving him.

Speaking on the Witch Trials of JK Rowling, a podcast series released on Tuesday, the author described her relationship with Jorge Arantes as violent and