All entries by this author

Secret until later

Aug 29th, 2022 10:45 am | By

A whopping catch-22:

A judge ruled this morning that Georgia’s Republican governor Brian Kemp must testify before a special grand jury that’s investigating possible illegal attempts by then-president Donald Trump and others to influence the 2020 election in the state – but not until after the November midterm election, the Associated Press reports.

See, this is a problem. It’s clear enough why it’s not desirable to have criminal investigations of political candidates happening close to an election, but, and this is a huge “but,” it’s also not desirable to remain in ignorance of the criminality or complicity in criminality of political candidates until it’s too late. You see what I mean? We get why Kemp doesn’t want to be … Read the rest



There will be riots

Aug 29th, 2022 10:22 am | By

The move now is to threaten violence if the criminal Trump is treated like the criminal he is.

Amid growing fears about political violence in the US, a senior Republican senator predicted “riots in the streets” if Donald Trump is prosecuted for mishandling classified information.

For “mishandling” top secret classified information by stealing it and keeping it in his hotel, including leaving it lying around in the open while fake Rothschilds wandered around the place.

Graham said: “Most Republicans, including me, believe when it comes to Trump, there is no law. It’s all about getting him. There’s a double standard when it comes to Trump.”

Really. What other ex-president has stolen whole boxes of top secret documents and … Read the rest



The biggest triumph of her career so far

Aug 29th, 2022 10:05 am | By

In snooker news

Jamie Hunter has won her first ranking title with victory in the US Women’s Snooker Open on Sunday in Seattle.

The Englishwoman secured the biggest triumph of her career so far with a 4-1 defeat of pre-tournament favourite Rebecca Kenna in the final.

Hunter comfortably advanced from the initial round-robin phase with four successive 2-0 wins to earn a spot in the quarter-finals.

There’s just one tiny detail not mentioned in the article – Hunter is not a woman. The Daily Star is more forthcoming, aka more honest.

WPBSA chairman Jason Ferguson has congratulated Jamie Hunter after she became the first transgender player to win a ranking event.

Hunter, who came out as transgender in

Read the rest


Sweaty, heady, joyously queer

Aug 29th, 2022 5:05 am | By

Representation:

I’m always hungry for historical queer representation,” says Charlie Josephine, the non-binary playwright of I, Joan, a sweaty, heady, joyously queer new drama about the patron saint of France. “Because our history has been erased – particularly transgender people’s – there is very limited documentation of us throughout history, even though we have existed since the beginning of time.”

Whose history? “Queer” people’s? So the fix is to erase the history of women?

To Josephine, Joan being written as non-binary felt both obvious and natural. “I could have written this play as a cis woman who is feminist and passionate about expressing themselves in this way,” says Josephine, shrugging the idea away. “But the more I read

Read the rest


Guest post: Male role models are not achievers

Aug 28th, 2022 6:13 pm | By

Originally a comment by Rob on Watch out: too girly!

I’m not at all convinced that the style of learning has a big impact on whether boys or girls do better. As a purely anecdotal point, I always did much better with internal assessment and assignments, because my technique and discipline for a single end of year exams swot absolutely sucked.

I suspect the biggest factor in declining male academic success is simply that over recent decades male heroes and role models are no longer scientists, engineers, academics, poets or ‘elites’ generally. They’re anti-heroes, the fighters, drinkers, womanisers, sneerers. In fact, engineers, scientists, or educated males in popular culture are more likely to be cast in either the role of … Read the rest



What’s your laundry doing in the meeting room?

Aug 28th, 2022 3:06 pm | By

Climate crisis/rising energy cost solved – just do everything at the office.

This is apparently meant as serious advice:

Office workers could be better off at their desks than working from home from October because of the money they will save on heating, making coffee and charging devices.

Becoming an energy freeloader who outsources the bulk of their consumption to their office, local café or gym over the next few months could save you about £28 a week, roughly £120 a month, from October.

This assumes you worked in the office five days a week and charged a phone, laptop and smart watch while you were there, made two cups of tea or coffee and reheated your lunch, and

Read the rest


The H word

Aug 28th, 2022 10:34 am | By

The BBC craps on lesbians from a very great height. Headline:

No place for hate, says Pride Cymru after Cardiff protest

So it was a homophobic protest?

Pride Cymru has said there is “no place for hate” after protesters interrupted an LGBTQ+ march in Cardiff.

A video emerged on social media showing police asking a group to leave for safety reasons on Saturday.

South Wales Police said no arrests were made after a “small protest group” had “assembled themselves on the route to block the procession”.

Bigots, right? A small group of fundamentalists perhaps?

Protest organisers Get The L Out were carrying banners, including one which read “transactivism erases lesbians”.

Ohhhhh…not god-botherers, not the God Hates Fags crew, but … Read the rest



Amidst a sea of hostility

Aug 28th, 2022 8:25 am | By

Julie Bindel on lesbians and Pride:

The lesbian group Get The L Out UK, founded to protest gender ideology and the pressure on same-sex attracted women to date trans women, joined Pride Cymru yesterday to make their voices heard amidst a sea of hostility. Ever since the trans movement decided that lesbians who reject sleeping with trans women are somehow morally deficient, same-sex attracted women have been harassed, defamed and abused in the name of trans equality. Get the L Out represent those old-fashioned lesbians that reject the penis and all that is attached to it.

“All that is attached to it” is witty.

The women at Pride Cymru were carrying banners adorned with the words, ‘trans activism

Read the rest


Nothing else had worked

Aug 28th, 2022 8:04 am | By

Andrew Weissmann, who was a senior prosecutor in the special counsel investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, clarifies some things.

The release of the redacted affidavit provides further clarity on why Attorney General Merrick Garland took the extraordinary step of approving the search of certain locations at Mar-a-Lago. The short version is that nothing else had worked and top-secret information was at stake.

Trump tried to leverage the search of Mar-a-Lago into a shocking violation of Trump’s rights and privileges and holy status as god-emperor, but it’s the other way around – the necessity of searching Mar-a-Lago underlines Trump’s repeated criminal refusals to return the documents he stole. It was a crime to take them and it … Read the rest



Taking the side of the bullies

Aug 28th, 2022 5:04 am | By

The head of Vale of Glamorgan Council calls lesbians at a Pride march “hate-filled protesters.”

https://twitter.com/lisburnett/status/1563547850361151488

Love? She calls it love? She calls a malicious lie about lesbians at Pride “love”?

Read the rest



The fandom believes all of it

Aug 28th, 2022 4:27 am | By

Joan Smith reviews the new JK Rowling novel:

Like its predecessor, The Ink Black Heart is a doorstopper, giving Rowling space to explore the psychology of individuals who abuse women online, but it is evidence of her ingenuity as a writer that this intention only gradually becomes clear.

“He’s convinced people I worked as a prostitute when I was broke,” Edie tells Robin. “He sent me pictures of my dead mother, claiming I told lies about her death. And the fandom believes all of it, and they attack me for stuff I’ve never done, never said, things I don’t believe.” The final sentence is not just heartfelt, it could be Rowling speaking about herself after a couple of

Read the rest


Lively

Aug 27th, 2022 3:25 pm | By

Academic debate 2022:

There is but one Idea, and many academics to exchange it.… Read the rest



Guest post: Anthropologists are in love with all types of quackery

Aug 27th, 2022 3:09 pm | By

Originally a comment by Army Ant on People became slotted.

This isn’t surprising at all. Anthropologists are very in love with all types of quackery (cultural relativism, post-structuralism, etc). It isn’t even a new phenomenon, BTW – they’ve been like this for several decades now. They also often seriously say things like (paraphrased, of course) “there’s no objective reality”, and basically that a cultural group’s emotional truth about its past/history is objective truth or at least should be treated as such.

This bullshit claim that sequential hermaphrodites (like clownfish and some arachnids) somehow “prove” biological sex isn’t real or that there aren’t just two of them is so utterly asinine. It’s akin to one of those “age sliders” claiming … Read the rest



Guest post: This allows activists to claim more woke cookies

Aug 27th, 2022 3:00 pm | By

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on People became slotted.

“It’s not just complex in the context of intersex … Our bodies are far more variable than our categories.”

This makes it sound like people with DSD (or “intersex” *as they would rather not be called), are more numerous than they really are, and their existence somehow blurs sex into a spectrum, ruining our ability to figure out who is male and who is female. It’s like saying that the existence of conjoined twins throws into doubt the classification of humans as bipedal tetrapods, and that to question that human limb number is anything but a spectrum is hateful bigotry.

Western science recognized only one sex—the male—and

Read the rest


Let women swim

Aug 27th, 2022 11:27 am | By

There was a protest at the Hampstead Ladies Pond today. No doubt that’s why India Willoughby went there and took his gloating taunting misogynist selfie.

https://twitter.com/StandingforXX/status/1563520493608583168

Read the rest



Strict protocols

Aug 27th, 2022 11:11 am | By

But at least the documents are totally secure at Mar-a-Lago, because it’s not as if anyone can just waltz in off the street.

According to an article from the Organized Crime & Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), a Ukrainian woman posing as a member of the Rothschild banking dynasty is under [FBI] investigation after infiltrating the private members club under a false pretense.

Inna Yashchyshyn, 33, allegedly lied to members that she was a Rothschild heiress and mingled with Trump, US Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and others at Mar-a-Lago functions.

OCCRP, in conjunction with the Pittsburgh Gazette, reported that Yashchyshyn had demonstrated “the ease with which someone with a fake identity and shadowy background” could bypass security at

Read the rest


Fabulous start to the day

Aug 27th, 2022 11:00 am | By
Fabulous start to the day

Typical Willoughby: taunting women with his ability to invade their spaces.

https://twitter.com/TriptychTwinsUK/status/1563498531276537856

Hur hur heehee smirk smirk.

Update: Now he’s blocking everyone so I’ll add a grab.

Read the rest


Is there gender-affirming decapitation?

Aug 27th, 2022 10:09 am | By

Another battle between/among a children’s hospital and Libs of TikTok/Chaya Raichik:

Children’s National Hospital has been inundated with threatening emails and phone calls after an influential right-wing Twitter account published a recording that falsely suggested the hospital is performing hysterectomies on transgender children, a hospital spokeswoman said…

The recording, made by Libs of TikTok founderChaya Raichik, features twotelephone operatorsat the renowned D.C. medical facility stating — in response to Raichik’squestions — that a 16-year-old trans boy would be eligible for a hysterectomy at the hospital’s gender development clinic. Children’s has not disputed the authenticity of the recording but said the employees provided inaccurate information.

“None of the people who were secretly recorded by this activist group deliver care

Read the rest


No lesbians allowed

Aug 27th, 2022 8:57 am | By

It seems the police removed lesbians from a Pride Cymru march today.

Just the lesbians. Not the men threatening the lesbians, just the lesbians.

Pride Cymru is proud of expelling lesbians.

Read the rest


People became slotted

Aug 26th, 2022 4:44 pm | By

Oh really? What historians?

That’s an ambiguous, not to say sneaky, thing to say. Even if there are some historians who talk about a “two-sex model,” it’s absurd to claim that all historians do as a matter of course – it’s absurd to treat it as universally accepted professional jargon.

It’s actually one Thomas Laqueur, who made the claim in a book titled Making Sex: Body and Gender Read the rest