All entries by this author
Jan 30th, 2023 10:16 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Originally a comment by Bjarte Foshaug on Calling all bullies.
To use my go-to example I see “god(s)” exactly the same way I (and practically everyone else) see the Midgard Serpent.
I don’t call myself an “amidgardserpentist”, so why should I call myself an “atheist”? If anyone honestly wants to know what I think, they’re going to have to stick around for the actual content. And if they don’t have time for that, then no real understanding is going to be conveyed by me giving them a label. This is also part of the reason* I no longer call myself a “feminist”. Julie Bindel and Laurie Penny are not different kinds of “feminists” any more than Kate … Read the rest
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
13 comments
Jan 30th, 2023 7:13 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Pompeo has written a book.
It’s a master class in the performative anger poisoning American politics.
Mike Pompeo is a smart man — first in his class at West Point, Harvard Law Review — with a sharp tongue. In March 2016, as a four-term tea party congressman from Kansas, he warned that Donald Trump, if elected, would be “an authoritarian president who ignored our Constitution.”
And he was absolutely right, and he was part of the authoritarian’s administration. Why is that? It has to be because he’s an immoral man doing what’s useful for him as opposed to what’s good for everyone else. A smart man and a very bad one.
Pompeo disdained America’s career diplomats. He describes them,
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7 comments
Jan 30th, 2023 4:42 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Men brag in public of taking a baby away from her mother as if she were a jacket or an umbrella.
https://twitter.com/marklowen/status/1619651897950081024
Men using women to gestate babies for them has nothing whatever to do with either democracy or equality.… Read the rest
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
16 comments
Jan 29th, 2023 5:25 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
MPs are afraid to talk about it at all.
In the privacy of a committee room on the parliamentary estate, Labour MPs gather for “top-secret” meetings to discuss the erosion of sex-based rights — and their numbers are growing.
They are part of a cross-party group of “gender-critical” MPs and peers often too frightened to express their views on trans matters publicly for fear of a backlash.
So that’s healthy. Trans ideology is making life steadily worse for women, and the people in charge are afraid even to talk about it.
One MP who attends regularly said the meetings “have to be top-secret or no one would come”. They added: “It’s a way of bringing women and men across
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2 comments
Jan 29th, 2023 11:58 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Bro journalist at the Herald talks to celebrity bro-woman India Willoughby. First sentence:
INDIA Willoughby is sitting at her kitchen table in Newcastle wearing the Versace top she bought as a treat after appearing on Celebrity Big Brother.
The scene is set! This is a woman he’s talking to. Womany womany womany woman. No self-respecting man wears a “top.” That’s laydee territory. No man buys himself a “top” as a “treat” – that’s a totally effeminate girly womany female feminine womany womany thing to do. ARE WE CLEAR???
Willoughby says he gets threats.
“Somebody will get killed. That’s where the rhetoric is going. Words kill, we know that. People are using their words and platforms to make people angry.
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16 comments
Jan 29th, 2023 10:44 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Originally a comment by Sastra on Calling all bullies.
Oftentimes, and more often than not, this antisocial, vile rhetoric and drive stems from “deeply-held’ religious convictions.
How does that work?
“Is homosexuality a sin?” This is a question about religious morality. “Are people who claim to be homosexual not really attracted or aroused by others of the same sex?” This is a fact question which never really came up. Religious people took it for granted because the truth of it was established in the common ground of human experience.
“Is being transgender a sin?” Religious. “Are people born with an inner conviction of what sex they are and is this a more reliable indicator of their actual sex than … Read the rest
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
2 comments
Jan 29th, 2023 8:52 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Reduxx has the story on the man in the women’s locker room in Santee:
The trans-identified male at the center of controversy after using the women’s locker rooms at a California YMCA has a disturbing social media history, Reduxx has found.
On January 11, video clips from a Santee City Council meeting went viral on social media after a teen girl took to the podium to report her concerns about a trans-identified male who had been allowed to use the women’s facilities at the local YMCA.
Rebecca Phillips, 17, became emotional as she recounted that she had seen “a naked male in the women’s locker room” one night after finishing her workout and using the showers. Phillips said that when
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2 comments
Jan 29th, 2023 8:07 am |
By Ophelia Benson
So this revolting Jason Frye dude has a public post on Facebook from three days ago, drumming up fans for his campaign to bully a teenage girl who doesn’t want leering men in the women’s locker room where she has to change her clothes.
Hello Humanists,
Tonight is an important night. Thoughts of our community have been proliferating and we have a hunger to get out into the general community and show support for deserving people and causes.
Last week a woman, Christynne Wood, was changing after her regular aqua aerobics routine and a teenager who saw Ms. Wood in the locker room went to the desk to complain about seeing a “man.”
Notice that the man gets the honor … Read the rest
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
12 comments
Jan 29th, 2023 7:30 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Well, this is breathtaking. I won’t need any more coffee for hours.
He didn’t even stop with “creepy little voyeur,” he called her a bunch more names too – including “puerile” which is funny because “puer” is Latin for “boy.”
Also he has a creepy (speaking of creepy) psychotic smile on his face the whole time he’s speaking, and whenever he says “trans women” he says it “trans women” as if to batter it into our brains and limbic systems.
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6 comments
Jan 28th, 2023 11:52 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Originally a comment by maddog1129 on Dim bulbs.
I’m afraid you’re the one who is misled. I’ve been a part of the LGBTQA+ community for the last thirty two years since I came out in 1990. I have trans friends. This entire thing is just like it was then for gay people – demonization, misrepresentation, lies and hatred.
But it’s not “just like it was for gay people.” The things that gay people wanted didn’t affect anyone else. The accusations that gay men “recruited” young men to be gay were false. The LG purposely and scrupulously separated themselves from the pedophilia activists like NAMBLA. The “demonization, misrepresentation, lies, and hatred” against gay men and lesbians were false accusations and … Read the rest
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
4 comments
Jan 28th, 2023 11:28 am |
By Ophelia Benson
All this time I didn’t realize that Tucker Carlson has been ranting about the loss of sex appeal in M&Ms. I had no idea.
“America, let’s talk,” M&M’s began on social media on Monday. Later, “We have decided to take an indefinite pause from the spokescandies.”
What happened? And what is a spokescandy?
The former is easy to answer: Tucker Carlson. The Fox News host embarked on a crusade against the M&M’s the moment the treatmakers disgusted him last year by removing the green M&M’s much beloved go-go boots in favor of sensible sneakers: “M&M’s will not be satisfied until every last cartoon character is deeply unappealing and totally androgynous,” he groused. “Until the moment you wouldn’t
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7 comments
Jan 28th, 2023 10:44 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Oh give it a rest ffs.
https://twitter.com/DrProudman/status/1618707403914248194
Women can help men commit rape, sure. Women can’t literally rape. The fact that one court decided to call helping men rape “rape” doesn’t change that fact. Women can also in theory shove objects up women, but that too is not rape, even if some court says it is.
Charlotte Proudman seems unusually horrible.… Read the rest
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
11 comments
Jan 28th, 2023 7:57 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Frying pans and fires.
Nicola Sturgeon faces another trans storm after a decision was made to house one of Scotland’s most violent prisoners in a women’s jail. The Record can reveal that volatile Tiffany Scott – who stalked a 13-year-old girl while known as Andrew Burns – has been rubber-stamped for transfer to a jail that aligns with her chosen gender.
Scott, 31, has been repeatedly refused the switch over several years but senior management relented in recent weeks. It is understood that the transfer is still planned – despite the First Minister instructing a U-turn on a decision to house double rapist Isla Bryson at all-women jail Cornton Vale, Stirling, on Thursday.javascript:void(0)
Last night the Scottish
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6 comments
Jan 28th, 2023 7:40 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Speaking of Katie [Colin] Montgomerie, James Esses provides a new piece of information about him.
A few months ago Esses received an email from a father concerned about his daughter’s belief that she was trans and needed hormones and surgery. They talked about therapy.
I explained to ‘Alfred’ that if his daughter was not open to speaking to someone, that “it could end up being counter-productive”. It is common therapeutic knowledge that someone who feels as if they are forced to go to therapy is not going to be receptive to the experience and is, therefore, less likely to benefit from it.
‘Alfred’ came back and said to me that his daughter had made an “agreement” with him that
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Posted in Notes and Comment Blog
Jan 28th, 2023 7:18 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Katy (erstwhile Colin) Montgomerie gave a staff pride talk at Edinburgh University yesterday.
https://twitter.com/JJMacBride/status/1619072317711327232
Yeah congrats. There’s nothing like inviting a man to talk about how horrible feminists are for making students feel empowered…unless they’re female students of course.
https://twitter.com/KatyMontgomerie/status/1618987944534241281
They don’t teach flat earth or creationism in school but they do teach that men who say they are women are women.
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12 comments
Jan 27th, 2023 5:22 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
By the way, this just in about that awful terf JK Rowling:
JK Rowling magicked up hundreds of thousands of pounds to save more than a hundred female lawyers and their families facing murder in Afghanistan.
The Harry Potter author made her huge donation when Britain and America pulled out of Kabul at speed, leaving hundreds of women judges, prosecutors and defence counsel under threat from the Taliban.
Along with a million dollars from businessman and philanthropist Lord Michael Hintze, plus large sums from other prominent figures and smaller donations from the public, it meant a total of 508 Afghans could be flown to safety.
In a life-or-death cloak and dagger operation the female lawyers and their families had
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Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
4 comments
Jan 27th, 2023 4:14 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
Well, that’s quite something.
https://twitter.com/ryanjohnbutcher/status/1618979547109797889
Ooooh yes, that’s the important thing here – not the rapist who pretends to be a woman, not the rapist who pretends to be a woman by wearing slasher fingernails and platinum hair where his face is supposed to be, not the rapist who pretends to be a woman and wants to be in a women’s prison so that he can terrorize and prey on them – no no no no no, the important thing here is that JK Rowling mentioned his name (which has been widely reported in mainstream news outlets).
Via
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9 comments