Two University of Bath senior lecturers have a piece in Jacobin about…you’ll never guess…”transphobia” and moral panic and zzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Sorry sorry I’m awake now – yes transphobia and moral panic and transphobia. The subhead presents their claim.

Britain’s moral panic over the trans “threat” is often promoted by people who see themselves as liberals. But their transphobia echoes the same reactionary themes long used to demonize minorities.

Or to put it another way, their evil echoes the same evil long used to be evil to saints. Compelling argument; can we talk about something else now?

No. Pay attention. These are senior lecturers telling us.

The horrific murder of Brianna Ghey has put transphobia in Britain’s news headlines yet again, with

Now that we’ve met Maisie Hill let’s get to know her even better. She certainly wants to tell people on the internet all about herself.

Chapter one: she had horrible period pain for 15 years, which is not something I would wish on anyone. Except Donald Trump.

Chapter two: she became fabulous.

At the time I was managing a rock bar in Soho and trying to find my path in life (having previously experimented with tattooing, music merchandise, and working in a parrot store in New York), so when I found the perfect combination of therapies that finally dealt with my period pain once and for all, I was inspired to train as a health practitioner.

What’s a health … Read the rest

An unexpectedly hilarious read, starting from Helen Joyce’s note-taking.

Here's the archived version of the job ad, in case they pull it 2/2 https://t.co/NyBhAQExx8

— Helen Joyce (@HJoyceGender) March 14, 2023

All righty let’s read that job ad, because it is both horrifying and hilarious. You want to read the archived version, because they’ve already edited out the “you can’t work here if you’re a terf” bit from the original.

Maisie Hill, seeking a virtual assistant, remote, contract.

We are looking for an organised, responsive, and helpful person to join our business as a Virtual Assistant. This role is all about supporting the needs of the business, so that we can create the results we want and help our

Trump is objecting to Ron DeSantis’s ethics. Trump is objecting to someone else’s ethics. Yes that’s right, his ethics.

Donald Trump’s allies are stepping up their battle with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, formally accusing him of violating state ethics and election laws with his “shadow presidential campaign.” 

Have they paid much attention to their own guy at all?

Make America Great Again Inc. is filing a 15-page complaint Wednesday with the Florida Commission on Ethics, a draft of which was obtained exclusively by NBC News. 

It asks the commission to probe whether pro-DeSantis super PACs, his “personally lucrative book tour” and a continued wave of state-level campaign contributions, among other things, “are unlawful because they serve his

Nice impartial lede:

JK Rowling has defended her decision to weigh in on the debate about transgender issues in the past few years.

Ah yes, her “decision” to “weigh in” – as if she had absolutely no business saying anything about a debate that impinges on women’s rights at a million points. As if she’s a presumptuous pushy intruder talking about something that’s none of her business. Now she has the gall to “defend” this bossy meddlesome move. Really, where does she get the nerve.

In the years since, Rowling has shared a number of controversial social media posts and essays on the debate, leading to accusations of transphobia. She has denied that she is transphobic.

Same again. … Read the rest

Trump explains that January 6 was all Pence’s fault.

Donald Trump on Monday sharply rebuked Mike Pence’s assertion that history would hold him accountable for the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, telling reporters that his former vice president should shoulder the blame for the violent riot that day by Trump’s supporters.

It was Billy who broke the lamp/ate the last cookie/spilled grape juice on the rug.

“Had he sent the votes back to the legislatures, they wouldn’t have had a problem with Jan. 6, so in many ways you can blame him for Jan. 6,” the former president said, referring to Pence’s refusal to reject the electoral college votes in Congress as Trump wanted him

Now there’s a genius heckler’s veto.

Parents have been issued with a demand for £600 to cover the cost of hiring private security guards before a public debate over gender ideology in schools.

But why do they have to hire private security guards?

The group, Concerned Adults Talking Openly About Gender Identity Ideology, plans to hold a meeting at Portobello Library in Edinburgh on March 14 but it has prompted anger among trans activists who are trying to force its cancellation.

That’s why. Because many “trans activists” and their “activist” allies get violent.

Making the objects of the violence pay for security is an ingenious way to silence the objects of the violence, which of course is the goal … Read the rest

Charlie Nash at The New Statesman says Jordan Peterson isn’t quite the social media darling he once was. In fact he’s a bit of a joke.

YouTube is rife with edits that splice Peterson’s increasingly hysterical rants with gameplay from the Command & Conquer games, a series that features a cast of eccentric villains who issue apocalyptic threats to the player as they progress through the story. Sadly, these edits are not even necessary. Peterson’s video monologues are quite enough on their own. Last year, with Bond villain-esque delivery, Peterson warned the Masters of the Universe to leave him alone or face the consequences: 

“Leave us alone, you centralisers of power. You worshippers of Gaia. You sacrificers of the

Originally a comment by What a Maroon at Miscellany Room.

This should be easy, right? A sport which depends entirely on strength should be strictly segregated by sex. Or perhaps you could accommodate trans people by creating a third category for people calling themselves trans and “non-binary”, as USA Powerlifting tried to do. Seems like a reasonable compromise.

But of course a TIM disagrees, and he found a judge to agree with him. The judge’s opinion is, well, something.

“Segregation and separation are the hallmarks of discrimination,” Minnesota District Judge Patrick Diamond wrote in a Feb. 27 decision. “Separate but equal is unavailing. Discrimination claims are not defeated because separate services, facilities, accommodations were made available.”

If … Read the rest

I’m reading Bernard Lane’s review of Hannah Barnes’s Time to Think at Quillette, and this bit jumped out at me:

In a 2015 parliamentary submission, Carmichael and her Tavistock colleague Bernadette Wren, both clinical psychologists, reported:

We offer assessment and treatment not just to those young people who are identifiably resilient and for whom there is an evidence base for a likely ‘successful’ outcome. We have carefully extended our programme to offer physical intervention [such as blockers] to those who have a range of psychosocial and psychiatric difficulties, including young people with autism and psychiatric difficulties, and young people who are looked after [in care].

Their stated rationale for this approach was that “[we] have felt that these young people

Germaine Greer in peak form.

"Female is real, and it's sex, and femininity is unreal, and it's gender.

For that to become the given identity of women is a profoundly disabling notion."

— Germaine Greer#IWD #InternationalWomensDay #IWD2023 pic.twitter.com/qXut9m4C6L

— Genevieve Gluck (@WomenReadWomen) March 8, 2023

The man she’s talking to says why not stop spending your time on this and instead say “Ok fine, if you want to come and join us as women then you’re women, come and join us in the bigger struggles.”

Right. Why don’t we all do that? Why don’t we all stop spending our time on our own struggles and instead urge different people, who have different struggles, to come and join us and … Read the rest

Junior here is confused.

No, kid. Men can’t get periods because they don’t have the necessary uterus. No uterus=no endometrium. No endometrium=no need or ability to expel it every 28 days. No expulsion of endometrium=NO PERIOD.

A kitchen table can’t do 70 on the freeway because it doesn’t have an engine or wheels. A dog can’t fly south for the winter because it doesn’t have wings. The Chrysler building can’t stroll over to the UN because it doesn’t have feet.… Read the rest

A Texas judge may be about to make mifepristone unavailable but he wants to do it in secret.

The Texas judge who could undo government approval of a key abortion drug has scheduled the first hearing in the case for Wednesday but took unusual steps to keep it from being publicized, according to people familiar with the plans.

After all, what business is it of ours?

The hearing will be an opportunity for lawyers for the Justice Department, the company that makes the drug and the conservative group that is challenging it to argue their positions before U.S. District Court Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk. After they do, the judge could rule at any time, potentially upending access to medication

Originally a comment by Screechy Monkey on What was that about arbitrary ranking?

One of the things I find frustrating in this area is the insistence by so many that there are simply no legitimate criticisms, and no legitimate critics.

Here you have someone saying that Stock’s work isn’t even “scholarship” and that philosophers should have, I don’t know, tarred and feathered her or something. Whatever is the philosophical equivalent of being disbarred or “struck off” the official Registry of Philosophers, I suppose.

Emily Bazelon writes a very even-handed article for the NY Times about youth gender medicine? Well, what does she know about this subject? Jesse Singal writes multiple articles about this area and does deep dives on the … Read the rest

Berry gender muffin:

Children as young as seven might be a “mixed berry gender fluid muffin”, teachers have been told in a sex education resource promoted by the Welsh Government.

That’s sex education? What would sex-non-education look like? What would sex fiction look like? How is it education to tell teachers children might be muffins? Sure, it’s a metaphor, but it’s a metaphor for a fantasy aiding a let’s pretend elucidating a fairy tale.

The 170-page “Agenda” pamphlet, which has been promoted to all schools in Labour-run Wales, claims that biological sex “is not just ‘male’ and ‘female’” and lectures teachers on how some “want to change our gender pronouns (eg. from he to she) or want to

Why it’s not a brilliant idea to take massive doses of ivermectin on the advice of that guy on the Internet:

Just before 7 am on March 3, Danny Lemoi posted an update in his hugely popular pro-ivermectin Telegram group, Dirt Road Discussions: “HAPPY FRIDAY ALL YOU POISONOUS HORSE PASTE EATING SURVIVORS !!!”

Hours later, Lemoi was dead.

Was it the poisonous horse paste that made him dead?

For the last decade, Lemoi had taken a daily dose of veterinary ivermectin, a dewormer designed to be used on large animals like horses and cows. In 2021, as ivermectin became a popular alternative COVID-19 treatment among anti-vaxxers, he launched what became one of the largest Telegram channels dedicated to promoting the

The Supreme Court power grab:

In a November essay for the Harvard Law Review, the Stanford Law School professor Mark A. Lemley describes this Court as an “imperial” one that has embarked on “a radical restructuring of American law across a range of fields and disciplines.” The means run along two lines: substantive changes to the Constitution made under the guise of interpretation, and procedural power grabs executed despite traditions of deference. This has pushed our constitutional system dangerously off balance, with little opportunity for correction.

Ironically, the danger comes from the “conservative” wing of the Court, born in part out of a purported rejection of “activist” court decisions, which it criticizes as policy making—territory that belongs to

Yet another smug philosophy bro telling women why we don’t get to talk without his approval.

A cursory review of Stock's bigotry which philosophers have allowed to masquerade as scholarship reveals that the only people who are presumably deserving of a full allocation of human rights are lesbians and gay men.

Everyone else must fend for themselves.

— Dr. Johnathan Flowers, Sword Bisexual (@shengokai) March 12, 2023

… Read the rest

Fox has a second lawsuit to deal with.

Smartmatic USA Corporation’s lawsuit against Fox News has attracted only a fraction of the attention garnered by the legal action of Dominion Voting Systems. Yet both firms are suing Fox for defamation related to its coverage of Donald Trump’s stolen-election lie, and both pose a serious threat to Fox’s finances and reputation.

Smartmatic is asking for more money.

So far, attempts by Fox lawyers to have the Smartmatic case dismissed have fallen on stony ground. Last week the New York state supreme court in Manhattan gave the green light for the case to proceed against Fox News, the Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo, the former business anchor Lou Dobbs and Trump’s

I saw this from Hadley Freeman –

It is genuinely astonishing to see a New Yorker writer arguing ostensibly for censorship of arguments they don’t like, and for a New Yorker editor to not challenge that pic.twitter.com/mvHZtPCrPw

— Hadley Freeman (@HadleyFreeman) March 12, 2023

So I went looking. It’s New Yorker editor David Remnick talking to New Yorker writer Masha Gessen, who went all they/them recently, much to my surprise too (too along with Hadley Freeman). I’d thought she was a grownup. The interview is on what we talk about when we talk about trans rights. It’s beyond depressing to see adults carrying on this way.

Remnick first encountered Gessen in Moscow more than 30 years ago.

As a