There was a conference in London today: Education for Women’s Liberation.

We are thrilled and honoured to welcome Joanna Cherry KC for the opening plenary of #Ed4WomensLib at The Institute of Education.

Joanna is the MP for Edinburgh Southwest and Chair of the UK Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights.@UCLwomenslib pic.twitter.com/mzZZeW1AV4

— Woman’s Place UK (@Womans_Place_UK) February 4, 2023

Of course there were “protests.”

Sitting in a room discussing feminist organising at universities in the face of TRA activism – and there are men leading young women and men to bang on the windows and scream ‘fascist cunts’ at us #Ed4WomensLib pic.twitter.com/BjiFQcYvRf

— Freya Vanadiss (@FreyaVanadiss) February 4, 2023

Maryam was there!

I will speak on panel @UCLwomenslib @Womans_Place_UK

Julian Baggini has a very nice “wisdom list from big thinkers” piece in the Guardian, in which he mixes philosophical training and literary appreciation. I’m a sucker for that combination.

Philosophers are, of course, the archetypal expert thinkers. Their discipline is often portrayed as a kind of formal method that lists fallacies to be avoided and distinguishes between deductive and inductive reasoning, invalid and sound arguments. These things have their place. But philosophy cannot be reduced to mere technique. Thinking well also requires adopting the right attitudes and being prepared to nurture effective habits. Without these “intellectual virtues” even the cleverest end up merely playing theoretical games.

Mind you, some people are happy just playing theoretical games, and fair … Read the rest

We’re in the era of assault rifle lapel pins.

Recently, Republican members of Congress, Rep. George Santos and Rep. Anna Paulina Luna have been spotted wearing lapel pins resembling miniature AR-15 rifles.

“Where are these assault weapon pins coming from? Who is passing these out?” Democratic Rep. Jimmy Gomez tweeted.

In another tweet, Gomez noted that Luna had worn the pin at an Oversight hearing less than 48 hours after her state of Florida experienced a mass shooting that wounded 11 people.

So? Mass shootings smell like Freedom.

The mystery of the lapel pins has now been solved. Republican Rep. Andrew Clyde from Georgia owns a gun store and has now taken responsibility for handing them out.

“I

Apparently there’s a rumor going around that Ron DeSantis is ordering female athletes to tell him all about their periods, and apparently the rumor is false.

Social media users are suggesting the conservative Republican governor, who has been an outspoken critic of transgender athletes, is again using sports to stoke controversy as he weighs a run for president in 2024.

The AP is trying to sort fact from fiction here, but the AP itself gets it wrong in the usual way – the issue is not “transgender athletes.” People have been so well trained to hide the truth on this subject that they do it even when debunking bullshit.

But the proposed mandate hasn’t had final approval, and

I went out in the wind and rain early this afternoon, and I did get pretty cold and wet, but it was fun too. (It looks stormier now.) When I got home and got reasonably dry I stood for a while looking out the window at the wind n rain and I guess thinking about weather and climate and the planet and doom, and thought (not for the first time) that it’s bizarre yet not bizarre that now that we know we’ve broken the planet and are pushing it steadily over a cliff is when a surprising number of us start thinking humans can magically change sex. You’d think we’d be intensely focused on the real, the physical, the … Read the rest

I said read the rest but I can’t keep away from that Slate piece on the guns despite restraining order ruling. I have to yell at it some more.

Justice Clarence Thomas’ majority opinion in Bruen held that all restrictions on the right to “armed self-defense” are presumptively unconstitutional. The only gun safety laws that pass legal muster, Thomas declared, are those with “historical analogues” from 1791 (when the Second Amendment was ratified) or 1868 (when it was applied to the states). This sea change in the law created a flood of litigation in the lower courts as litigants tried to prove that modern gun restrictions were not deeply rooted in American history. Courts have been receptive, relying on Bruen 

Slate reports:

The Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to possess a gun while under a restraining order for domestic violence, the 5^th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Thursday in a decision with alarming implications for gun violence in America.

What is a restraining order restraining if it’s not restraining gun-having, one wonders. Maybe it’s about table manners. No elbows on the table.

Although mass shootings and intimate partner murders are heavily linked to domestic violence, the 5^th Circuit held that the government cannot disarm alleged abusers solely because they are subject to a civil protective order. The court vacated the conviction of a man, Zackey Rahimi, who possessed a gun after allegedly assaulting his

The ACLU has organized what it says are lawmakers targeting “LGBTQ” rights into six categories plus “other.”

They are

Accurate IDs

Civil Rights

Fress Speech and Expression

Healthcare

Public Accommodations

Schools and Education

Under Accurate IDs they say

These bills attempt to limit the ability to update gender information on IDs and records, such as birth certificates and driver’s licenses. This puts transgender people at risk of losing jobs, facing harassment, and other harms. Trans, intersex, and nonbinary people need IDs that accurately reflect who they are to travel, apply for jobs, and enter public establishments without risk of harassment or harm.

But what the ACLU means by “Trans, intersex, and nonbinary people need IDs that accurately reflect who they … Read the rest

Advertising on that Guardian article:

Hur hur guys hur hur.… Read the rest

There is audio.

A newly released audio recording offers a behind-the-scenes look at how former US president Donald Trump’s campaign team in a pivotal battleground state knew they had been outflanked by Democrats in the 2020 presidential election.

But even as they acknowledged defeat, they decided to “fan the flames” of allegations of widespread fraud costing Trump victory there, which were ultimately debunked – repeatedly – by elections officials and the courts.

In other words they decided to amplify a lie, knowing it was a lie. Not surprising on one level, but there are other levels.

The audio from 5 November 2020, two days after the election, is surfacing as Trump again seeks the White House while continuing to

The ACLU is getting more captured by the day.

So much wrong in that one simple sentence.

The health care they have in mind has nothing to do with LGB people.

There’s no such thing as “gender-affirming” health care. Amputating parts of your body to match a fantasy that you’re the opposite sex is malpractice, not health care.

Promoting these reckless claims about needing amputations to match a personal fantasy is a million miles from what the ACLU should be doing.

Dragging lesbians and gay men into this foul campaign to encourage self-mutilation is absolutely not what the ACLU should be doing.… Read the rest

Originally a comment by Sastra on Lord Falconer.

Whenever I’m accused of fear mongering and creating a problem out of nothing because transwomen are no more violent than other women I always try to point out that they’re tacitly admitting that if transwomen WERE more violent than natal women, then they must believe that there’d be cause for alarm. So — what’s the figure and remedy?

If their level of violence were — oh, let’s say it’s hypothetically the same as men — would that be enough to put safeguards in place? What would those safeguards consist of? What if transwomen were more likely to be violent than males in general? In their view of things, is there a … Read the rest

Willoughby says he felt as if he were being lynched. Great sense of proportion that guy has.

"Lynch mob. Felt like I was at a hanging!"

Willoughby comparing an appearance on BBC Question Time to the lynchings of Jim Crow's American south is beyond offensive.#BBCQT#Racist pic.twitter.com/L1FimmmuDW

— gender is harmful (@genderisharmful) February 3, 2023

What’s “amazing” about pretending to change sex? Would it be amazing to pretend to be an airplane or a sardine or a block of cheese? What is so particularly amazing about trans people? Apart from their success at hijacking everything, that is.… Read the rest

“To be sat at home and see people who aren’t actually trans discuss your life and paint you as a whole as dangerous to society…is just horrible”

Broadcaster India Willoughby says there is a lot of misinformation in the trans prisoners row#bbcqt https://t.co/8cus8PaNMw https://t.co/SUQoiyFL4n

— BBC Question Time (@bbcquestiontime) February 2, 2023

“It’s only trans women that people are gettin’ upset about,” he says. And why might that be Willz? It’s because trans women are men, abusing this deranged new ideology to steal women’s rights, ruin women’s sport, and generally undo all the work women have done over the past six decades to be seen and hired and promoted and talked to as equal human beings. That’s why. You’re … Read the rest

India Willoughby was on BBC Question Time this evening. There are some clips…

“The individual is a rapist.”

Excruciating #bbcqt pic.twitter.com/h5wrNFbxS8

— teresa smith (@treesey) February 2, 2023

“It’s remarkable to me that politicians in this country…seem to have given up on the belief in reality, that sex is real and that it’s irrefutable”

Journalist Ella Whelan says women are an afterthought in the debate around single-sex spaces#bbcqt https://t.co/8cus8PaNMw pic.twitter.com/LWuddk0AkI

— BBC Question Time (@bbcquestiontime) February 2, 2023

… Read the rest

Originally a comment by Mike Haubrich on There are buttons they can push.

During the second year of the pandemic, I was listening to a frightening story on the BBC as the UK government declared a new period of lockdowns. There was no consideration for women who lived with violent men. A woman reported that she was listening to the news with her abuser as Johnson made the announcement. I don’t recall if it was her husband or not, but he looked over at her and said “Let the games begin.” He knew that he had her isolated. It was chilling, and I had that same feeling that I get when I am watching a horror movie, that I … Read the rest

From last week:

Imagine the outrage if, after the discovery that yet another rapist had been found amid the ranks of the Metropolitan Police, the Commissioner had told women to calm down. “The vast majority of officers,” he might have told protesters, “are likely to be safe.”

The thought is preposterous. Yet it is the very argument made by those defending Scottish legislation that would allow people to change their gender in law without existing safeguards. Lord Falconer, Lord Chancellor under Tony Blair, dismissed the complaints of those concerned about the privacy and safety of women, saying, “The vast majority of [applicants] are likely to be genuine.”

No skin off his noble ass, is it. It’s only women … Read the rest

More tipping points than we thought:

Trees set ablaze in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest could contribute to melting glaciers in the Himalayas and Antarctica because distant ecosystems essential to regulating the Earth’s climate are more closely connected than previously thought, new research has found. 

Scientists have discovered a new atmospheric pathway that originates in the Amazon, runs along the South Atlantic, then across East Africa and the Middle East until it reaches central Asia, according to a paper published this month in Nature Climate Change. That connection, which stretches 20,000 kilometers (12,400 miles) across the globe, means that when the Amazon warms, so does the Tibetan Plateau, whereas the more it rains in the Amazon, the less it rains

The things people say, and write, and publish. It’s astounding.

The fact that the Loughborough study won't deliver any worthwhile data throws us back on the 'onus' question. The IOC claims, irrationally, that there should be 'no assumption of advantage' for TW.

And one purported argument for *that* is this gem from VI: pic.twitter.com/ZBNbbiI6H4

— Jon Pike (@runthinkwrite) February 2, 2023

Many ways, such as complete androgen insensitivity syndrome…and what else? Name one – just one of those “many ways.”

The “presence of a penis” of course isn’t the issue.

As for biological male being a socially constructed category – then how did all these billions and billions of critters get conceived and gestated and born? If female and … Read the rest

Staggering. MSP asks Sturgeon if a rapist who “changed their gender after being charged by the police” should be considered a woman, and her oh so cute answer is that a rapist should be considered a rapist.

But that’s not the question. We already consider a rapist a rapist; the question is whether we consider a man who is a rapist a woman.

H/t latsot… Read the rest