The Irish Times reports:

An attempt to stage Waiting for Godot in the Netherlands took on a Beckettian turn when the venue cancelled the performances because the Irish director had auditioned only men for the all-male cast of characters.

Can you imagine?? Auditioning only men to play men??? That director should be in jail, with bruises and contusions.

The play, in which Vladimir and Estragon are occasionally joined by other male characters as they await someone who never arrives, had been in rehearsals since November and was due to be staged at the University of Groningen’s Usva student cultural centre in March.

But the performances were cancelled after the venue discovered the casting call for the play’s five male

Originally a comment by Graham Douglas on Julie don’t want no stinkin’ fair competition.

I’ll admit up front that I am a huge rugby (union) fan. The team I support (Sale Sharks) started up a women’s team about three years ago and they now play in the top league for women’s rugby in England. I go down to watch them whenever I can because the standard of rugby played is very high. The games are most enjoyable and I always try to encourage anyone with even a vague interest in rugby to get down and watch the women.

All of which pre(r)amble is to say that the supporters’ club organised a meet&greet with some of the players and coaching … Read the rest

Marjorie Taylor Greene is annoyed because They Don’t Pay Her Enough.

Earlier this week, the Republican representative from Georgia appeared on journalist Glenn Greenwald’s podcast and expressed concern about her congressional salary, which according to public records is $174,000 annually.

Greene told Greenwald: “Becoming a member of Congress has made my life miserable. I made a lot more money before I got here. I’ve lost money since I’ve gotten here.”

She’s welcome to quit. She wasn’t drafted.

Additionally, Greene complained about the amount of time her congressional work consumes, saying: “The nature of this job, it keeps members of Congress and senators in Washington so much of the time, too much of the time … that we don’t get

Golly. The crowd at today’s Let Women Speak is MASSIVE.

The turn out is tremendous.#LetWomenSpeak #letwomenspeakglasgow pic.twitter.com/tShJvhv17n

— Let Women Speak Official (@StandingforXX) February 5, 2023

About to begin. What a fantastic crowd! Hello @Gillian_Philip #LetWomenSpeak pic.twitter.com/RbYwwsztax

— Polly Clark (@MsPollyClark) February 5, 2023

The whole thing:

Let Women Speak #glasgow #letwomenspeak #standingforwomen I’m https://t.co/cxNKzUlPhh

— Kellie-Jay Keen (@ThePosieParker) February 5, 2023

… Read the rest

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on He’d like that.

The English Rugby Football Union (RFU) is facing a legal challenge to its ban on male players competing in contact rugby with women.

Julie Curtiss, 52, told @ESPNUK that opponents to men participating in women’s sports “need to be dragged, kicking and screaming.”

When reported honestly, like this, in plain language which doesn’t hide the issue, it’s perfectly clear what’s at stake. It’s also perfectly clear that the men are in the wrong. “Identification” may have no power to change material reality, but it sure plays havoc with journalistic integrity.

“Transness” has nothing to do with it. It’s men in women’s sport. Let them keep their socially … Read the rest

ESPN tells us more about the tragic exclusion of huge “Julie” Curtiss from women’s contact rugby, and the entitlement still looms as large as Julie himself does.

In July of 2022, the Rugby Football Union (RFU), the game’s governing body in England, voted to ban transgender women from playing women’s contact rugby, and trans player Julie Curtiss is leading the opposition to fight the decision.

Trans player Julie Curtiss, who is HUGE, is leading the opposition to fight the decision.

The RFU’s reasoning behind the ban, they said in their July statement, was to ensure ‘fair competition and safety of all competitors.’ They added that their decision was based on the latest available scientific research.

For Curtiss, that decision has

Wow. The placid, determined, immovable entitlement of this massive guy is breathtaking. (Being tackled by him would be breathtaking too, and bonebreaking and possibly life-ending, if he snaps your neck.)

The English Rugby Football Union (RFU) is facing a legal challenge to its ban on male players competing in contact rugby with women.

Julie Curtiss, 52, told @ESPNUK that opponents to men participating in women's sports "need to be dragged, kicking and screaming." pic.twitter.com/Cy5eQCoFNL

— REDUXX (@ReduxxMag) February 4, 2023

“They” offered him coaching or reffing and he said no because if he does those things it means that he is “accepting that trans women can’t play this sport.” No it doesn’t. It means accepting that men can’t play women’s… Read the rest

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