I decided for some reason we needed some Lift Every Voice and Sing.… Read the rest

There was this derailment in Ohio last week…the one that spilled a whole lot of vinyl chloride. It’s gone bizarrely or suspiciously under-reported. I looked for reporting a few hours ago and the only major news outlet that turned up was, of all things, Fox News. Where the hell are the other majors?

The short version is it’s bad. Really really bad.

Since the news outlets are looking fixedly in the opposite direction for some reason it’s going to have to be some tweets, sorry.

Nearly 1 million pounds of vinyl chloride were on this train. Now, the EPA has confirmed it's entered the Ohio River basin which is home to 25 million people.

This is one of the deadliest

This is how they derive the “they want to wipe us out!!!” lie. They translate successful treatment into wiping them out. Their condition is their idenniny so treating the condition equals genocide.

Making gender dysphoria go away=wiping out trans people, is the logic here.

But. The people in question still exist.

That makes it not genocide, not “they want to wipe us out.”

If people change political parties they don’t cease to exist. They change, but they don’t cease to exist. If believers turn atheist or atheists turn believers, same thing – they still exist, they’re just different.

A change in belief can of course be a very profound change, but no matter how profound it is … Read the rest

Tavistock scandal is scandal:

More than 1,000 children were referred for puberty blockers at an experimental gender clinic where concerns were ignored to preserve a “gold dust” NHS contract, a new book claims.

Former clinicians at the Gender Identity Development Service (Gids), part of the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust in London, have detailed how some “incredibly complex” children were placed on medication after one face-to-face assessment, despite many having a variety of mental health or family background problems.

And the “medication” isn’t really medication, it’s more like tampering.

The claims come in Time to Think: The Inside Story of the Collapse of the Tavistock’s Gender Service for Children by Hannah Barnes, which will be released this month.

Barnes,

This. Again.

A woman’s $1,100 went to a man.… Read the rest

Coel will enjoy this.… Read the rest

Trump called in the researchers, but they didn’t deliver the goods, so he blanked them.

Former president Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign commissioned an outside research firm in a bid to prove electoral-fraud claims but never released the findings because the firm disputed many of his theories and could not offer any proof that he was the rightful winner of the election, according to four people familiar with the matter.

The campaign paid researchers from Berkeley Research Group, the people said, to study 2020 election results in six states, looking for fraud and irregularities to highlight in public and in the courts. Among the areas examined werevoter machine malfunctions, instances of dead people voting and any evidence that could

“Katy” Montgomerie says he had a bad experience.

What is a “hen do”? It’s what in the US is called a “bridal shower” – a party for a soon-to-marry woman attended only by women.

First of all, obviously nobody should throw drinks over people.

Second, if it really was a hen do then he didn’t belong there, and neither did the guy who threw the drink over him.

Third, I don’t believe it for a second about the crying. Montgomerie is a notorious bully; I can easily believe he was enraged, but not that he got the boo-hoos.

Fourth, it wasn’t his night, it was the future bride’s night. (Sorry, I find all this bridal/showery/do stuff kind of ooky, … Read the rest

OJ is doing his “blame women” thing again.

It's striking how both the anti-trans and anti-migrant backlash are using the same rationale – 'protect women!' – using the all too real endemic crisis of male violence against girls and women to specifically target two vulnerable minorities.

— Owen Jones (@OwenJones84) February 12, 2023

To put it another way, it’s striking how men like OJ cheer from the sidelines as other men dress up in womanface and steal women’s rights.

Men who dress up in womanface are not “vulnerable” in relation to women. It’s the other way around. Men can still punch even when wearing lipstick.

Also, false equivalence is false.

By the way, the Ku Klux Klan's founding rationale was,

The rest of that interview:

20:59:

Robinson: Just one last specific: the other example, about women’s rights, is this yes tabloid story, but with substance behind it, that people who give birth shouldn’t be called mothers, they should be called people who give birth – is that really Stonewall’s view of the world?

Anderson: So, no, this again is what gets mischaracterized. What Stonewall looks to do is to provide organizations with good practice to provide an incluzive place to work. It’s not the law, Nick.

Robinson: But is it good practice to stop calling mothers “mothers”?

Anderson: In some organizations potentially that’s what they might want to do, in terms of the culture that they’re trying to create

Chapter 2 – ideology. And somebody, on mainstream BBC Anderson says in a scolding voice, talked about “an LGBTQ ideology.” Yes that’s right, Sunshine, it’s an ideology that men can become women.

I mean, I’m not living an ideology, Nick. I’m living my life.

But he’s not T. It’s the T bit that rests on an ideology. Robinson:

But it’s a set of ideas, that we’re gonna come to, it’s an assertion of a belief not a fact that trans women are women – we’re gonna come to that –

They cross-talk for a few seconds with Anderson repeating “my life” and Robinson citing “a set of views and beliefs that some people see as an ideology.” Finally around … Read the rest

Nick Robinson interviews Iain Anderson on Political Thinking, under the subtitle

How will the new chair of Stonewall approach the heated debate around gender politics?

We know the answer of course. With the complete indifference to the concerns of women that Stonewall has been demonstrating all along.

They start by talking about Stonewall, and Anderson cites “the LGBTQ+ community” – so right at the beginning we know we’re not going to get clarity, because there is no such community and there can’t be such a community, because they are at cross-purposes. The T is not the same as the LGB and they don’t belong together because the T is destructive of human rights, especially women’s rights, while the LGB … Read the rest

Originally a comment by As The Smoke Rises Upwards on Permits for brothels.

I claim no expertise on the subject, but my understanding is that legalizing prostitution increases trafficking of women. Once would-be johns no longer fear the legal consequences of paying for sex, demand for prostitutes soars. For some reason, however, not too many women are eager to sign up for a highly stigmatized job that will require them to have sex with an endless line of strange men who may or may not have STDs.¹ And so women are brought in from Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia to fill the gap between supply and demand.

I’ve also read that even legal prostitution—or perhaps especially legal prostitution—generates a … Read the rest

Amsterdam is trying to “manage” the rental of women.

In their latest effort to rein in carousing visitors, Amsterdam officials announced plans this week to tamp down disruptive behavior in the city’s Red Light District, including barring pot-smoking on the streets, reducing hours for restaurants and brothels, and tightening some alcohol restrictions.

What is a “red light district”? It’s a euphemism for an area where women are rented.

The city issues permits for brothels and sex clubs to operate. Under rules that had already been decided, brothels will only be able to stay open until 3 a.m., not the 6 a.m. closing time in place now.

So get your cash on the counter by 2:59 boys or you’ll … Read the rest

The Federalist (sorry) on the different tune that detransitioners hear:

After being swarmed by health providers who enabled her to medically transition as a minor, Prisha Mosley now says she’s been abandoned by the medical community as she attempts to navigate a complicated and painful detransition.

Transition is new, exciting, glam, “woke”; un-transitioning is un-all that.

Prisha has a slew of medical complications dating back to the more than five years she spent on testosterone and a double mastectomy that a plastic surgeon performed shortly after she turned 18. Many of those complications surround her endocrine system, which encompasses the hormones that regulate nearly every process in the body, from metabolism to growth and development, emotions, mood, sexual

But they just might possibly conceivably game the system.

Transgender applicants are being offered “ethically dubious” preferential access to a university, raising fears that fraudsters could game the system to get ahead of straight-A pupils.

Dundee University includes transgender status in its widening access policy, which lowers the admissions criteria for applicants who are deemed to be disadvantaged.

In the US it’s called affirmative action (and it’s highly contested and has been since it came into being decades ago).

Preferential access, widening access, affirmative action, whatever; why would trans people need it? What trans-specific barriers to higher education do they face?

Vikki Boliver, a sociology professor who sits on the Scottish government’s access delivery group, warned that fraudsters could

Male reporter talks to three women about their work, fails to avoid sneering.

Lisa Mackenzie, Kath Murray and Lucy Hunter Blackburn call themselves “a policy analysis collective”. They wince slightly when they hear this description spoken out loud.

“It was the best descriptor of ourselves we could come up with,” Mackenzie says apologetically. Known collectively as Murray Blackburn Mackenzie (MBM), they have consistently provided the most cogent criticism of the Scottish government’s attempts to make it easier to change your legal gender.

In policy papers, blog posts and evidence to parliament over the past five years they have offered clarity where there was muddle. With intellectual ruthlessness they have identified key weaknesses in Sturgeon’s proposal. They have provided a

Breathtaking.

Uterus transplants for transgender women will soon be possible, doctors say.

So what? It’s possible to cut people’s heads off, but it’s not desirable. Sticking a uterus in a man is not desirable. Human beings have more urgent things to do at this time.

Several teams are “actively working” to make uterus transplants for transgender women a reality, according to an article published in the medical journal Fertility and Sterility, with the first such procedure likely to happen “within the next few years, if not sooner.”

Why stop there? Why not transplant zebra legs onto humans? Why not transplant dog tails onto sharks? Why not remake The Fly?

If the anatomical challenges in transgender women can be overcome —

Makes no sense.

Legacy blue checks will be removed soon. Those are the ones that are truly corrupt.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 10, 2023

Literally zero sense.

His new blue tick is simply a thing you buy. You pay $8 a month, it’s yours. It means nothing.

The old blue tick was a verification of identity and (at least sometimes) “notability.” It was free, and it required documentation.

How is the second “truly corrupt” and the first not corrupt?

Maybe I’m overthinking this. Maybe to him “corrupt” just means “not giving Elon Musk money.”… Read the rest