All entries by this author

My me my mine me me me

Aug 23rd, 2022 3:36 pm | By

All the narcissism.

https://twitter.com/libsoftiktok/status/1561850667085418496

“Buckle up everybody it’s time to talk about my”

Stop right there.

Updating to add: It’s a parody.… Read the rest



Low bar

Aug 23rd, 2022 12:32 pm | By

“You can’t criticize or dispute ____, ____ is a mother’s child!”

The Daily Record rants:

The mum of a Scots transwoman who is competing in a women’s professional golf tournament has hit out at Judy Murray after she criticised her daughter’s place in the competition.

Why “the mum”? Why baby talk? Other people’s mothers aren’t “the mums,” they’re the mothers. We’re not all 6. Also why bother with a link for “mum”? Also stop saying “hit out at” when you mean “disagreed with” or “criticized.”

But the real point is, that’s not “her daughter,” it’s her son, which is why it’s not fair for him to be competing in a women’s tournament.

Hailey Davidson, from Stair in Ayrshire, became

Read the rest


“The filing is basically a confession”

Aug 23rd, 2022 10:53 am | By

This is an interesting point – by claiming executive privilege he’s confessed.

https://twitter.com/AshaRangappa_/status/1562038569098776576… Read the rest


As if it were a serious legal document

Aug 23rd, 2022 10:37 am | By

Lawyers are laughing at Trump’s filing.

It might be tempting to scrutinize the filing as if it were a serious legal document, submitted in a credible way. That would be a mistake. Orin Kerr, a conservative law professor at UC Berkeley, noted overnight that many actual lawyers “are giggling at Trump’s motion, and how poorly it was done.”

Go on, just say it. Badly. The word is “badly.” There’s no need to soften it with “poorly.” Trump isn’t poor, he’s bad.

Among the many problems is the fact that it’s oddly late. The FBI executed its search warrant on Monday, Aug. 8. At that point, federal law enforcement officials reclaimed classified materials the former president brought to his glorified

Read the rest


As an inclusive retailer

Aug 23rd, 2022 9:40 am | By

It never ceases to amaze me the way “inclusive” is for trans people but never ever for women. I still say I was never given the option to agree or disagree with the proposition “women are no longer an oppressed group in any way.”

See by giving customers a choice of male or female changing rooms they’re not being “an inclusive retailer,” because they’re excluding female people who don’t want to risk being spied on or assaulted while they try on a bra. … Read the rest



Meaning

Aug 23rd, 2022 9:28 am | By

What an interesting claim:

Regarding Julia Mason and Leor Sapir’s op-ed “The American Academy of Pediatrics’ Dubious Transgender Science” (Aug. 18): In its recommendations for caring for transgender and gender-diverse young people, the AAP advises pediatricians to offer developmentally appropriate care that is oriented toward understanding and appreciating the youth’s gender experience. This care is nonjudgmental, includes families and allows questions and concerns to be raised in a supportive environment. This is what it means to “affirm” a child or teen; it means destigmatizing gender variance and promoting a child’s self-worth. Gender-affirming care can be lifesaving. It doesn’t push medical treatments or surgery; for the vast majority of children, it recommends the opposite.

That’s what “gender-affirming care” … Read the rest



He can’t find a lawyer

Aug 23rd, 2022 4:33 am | By

Law-mavens are following the Maralago adventures with keen interest. [Updating to add: the bit about not having a lawyer turns out to be a mistake. H/t Screechy]

Read the rest



More than 300

Aug 23rd, 2022 4:24 am | By

The NY Times on Trump’s lavish archive of classified documents:

The initial batch of documents retrieved by the National Archives from former President Donald J. Trump in January included more than 150 marked as classified, a number that ignited intense concern at the Justice Department and helped trigger the criminal investigation that led F.B.I. agents to swoop into Mar-a-Lago this month seeking to recover more, multiple people briefed on the matter said.

There are levels here. He wasn’t supposed to have any documents: they were never his to keep. Multiply that by a very big number for classified documents. Multiply again for the huge number of them.

In total, the government has recovered more than 300 documents with classified

Read the rest


A peep

Aug 22nd, 2022 4:07 pm | By

The Society of Authors has advice for us.

https://twitter.com/Soc_of_Authors/status/1561604504289775618

A lot of authors I follow are annoyed by the condescension of “play nicely.” I read some of the thing we were told to have a peep at, and was struck by a certain omission.

The Society of Authors is committed to promoting professional behaviour throughout all its activities, and to tackling and preventing bullying, harassment and racism in all their forms.

Why racism only? Why not sexism? (There are others, too – classism, xenophobia, etc – but women are half of everyone, so we’re a particularly big item to ignore.)

Bullying, harassment and racism have no place on our premises, in our communications, or in any other environment in

Read the rest


Guest post: Not even mad

Aug 22nd, 2022 3:34 pm | By

Originally a comment by Artymorty on Steve’s nails.

Does Steve think that the only way to rebel against gender stereotypes is to pretend that sex isn’t binary? Does Steve not understand that gender stereotypes aren’t the same as biological sexes? Does Steve think it’s impossible for him to wear nail polish if males and females are in any way different sexes? Does Steve think that by declaring himself neither male nor female he’s on the path to convincing us all that male and female literally don’t exist? Or is it not a matter of whether sex differences do or don’t exist, but whether they should or shoudn’t exist?

None of this makes any sense for more than a … Read the rest



Steve’s nails

Aug 22nd, 2022 11:26 am | By

Brendan on the narcissism of I don’t even have to say whose narcissism it is.

In his new book None of the Above: Reflections on Life Beyond the Binary, nonbinary writer Travis Alabanza cites this dilemma [to paint the nails or not to paint the nails] as proof of the ‘oppression [of] the gender binary’. He introduces us to Steve, a man who had ‘wanted to paint his nails for years’. But he didn’t because, like the rest of us cis squares, he’d been conditioned into ‘upholding the gender binary’ which says men don’t do that.

But then he saw Alabanza on stage and was EmPowered to paint those mofos.

Alabanza is moved by this brave strike against the

Read the rest


Whose bodily autonomy?

Aug 22nd, 2022 11:00 am | By
Whose bodily autonomy?

Idiots.

Notice anything missing? Of course: what’s always missing.

It’s not our bodily autonomy, i.e. everyone’s. It’s specifically women’s bodily autonomy. Women are not allowed to be entirely free because women have the responsibility of making the new humans. It is women who are dominated and pushed around by laws against abortion, and it’s yet another insult to women when political campaigns pretend it’s all of us.

The whole post by MoveOn which doesn’t mention women once:

The GOP thought they could strip away our bodily autonomy without facing any consequences. But the recent election in Kansas, one of the country’s most conservative states, proved them WRONG.

The anti-abortion measure on the ballot was defeated in every congressional district in

Read the rest


Women? What are they?

Aug 22nd, 2022 10:43 am | By

Let’s insult women some more.

“Hannah” Mouncey is an enormous man. The one woman on this panel is a friend of Mouncey’s. … Read the rest



Cruel and despicable

Aug 22nd, 2022 10:11 am | By

Putin is aggrieved.

Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, has sent his condolences to the family of Darya Dugina, describing the daughter of the ultra-nationalist Russian ideologue Alexander Dugin as a “patriot of Russia”.

In a statement published on the Kremlin website, the Russian leader described Dugina’s killing as a “despicable, cruel crime”.

No doubt it was, but what does Putin suppose it was when he launched a war? Was it not a despicable, cruel crime to kill all these Ukrainians?… Read the rest



Speaking of hack politicians

Aug 22nd, 2022 8:44 am | By

Trump is insulting his own creatures again.

Donald Trump launched a new line of attack against Mitch McConnell over the weekend, calling the Republican Senate minority leader a “broken down hack politician” for what he believes is a lack of support for the GOP’s 2022 midterm candidates.

In a post on Truth Social, Trump also insulted McConnell’s wife, former Trump administration official Elaine Chao, calling her “crazy.”

So why did he lean so heavily on both of them for such a long time?

“Why do Republican Senators allow a broken down hack politician, Mitch McConnell, to openly disparage hard-working Republican candidates for the United States Senate?” Trump wrote on his social media platform Saturday. “This is such

Read the rest


A significant role in girls’ access to education

Aug 22nd, 2022 8:34 am | By

I guess UNICEF is a terf.

Ensuring no child is excluded on the basis of gender is a priority identified in UNICEF’s new Education Strategy. To reach this goal, a commitment to strong intersectoral work is paramount. To understand what this means in practice, this blog outlines how Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) plays a significant role in girls’ access to education and could help unlock the future for millions of girls around the world.

WASH is fundamental for girls’ education

Every child – including every girl – has the right to a quality education, enshrined in the Convention on the Rights of the Child 30 years ago…

For girls, appropriate WASH facilities are a particularly important part

Read the rest


Women: protect the guy in the next stall

Aug 22nd, 2022 8:24 am | By

One of these again.

https://twitter.com/PolarPrem/status/1561392046811881473

It really doesn’t take that much thought to see the problem. The authors of this harangue can’t have made any effort at all.

What about the privacy of the person – let’s say, just to pick one at random, the woman – who “feels like” the man she sees in the women’s toilet is in the wrong toilet? Why doesn’t her privacy matter at least as much as his? Why is he in the women’s toilet? Why can’t he use the men’s? Why is it her job to respect his privacy but not his job to respect hers? Why is it her job to protect him from harm when he could be there to do … Read the rest



The lie pops up again

Aug 21st, 2022 3:55 pm | By
The lie pops up again

Misleading if not just plain dishonest.

Nobody is trying to “exclude LGBTQ+ students” from sports or healthcare or education. I’m sure there are way too many religious fanatics trying to convince lesbian and gay students to go straight, and they should stop, but mass exclusion is a different matter. People who aren’t delusional are trying to exclude male students from female sports, because including them is grossly unfair to the female athletes, and endorsement of cheating by the male students.

There are people who consider “gender-affirming” surgeries and hormones not health care but tragic mutilation at the behest of a fad. The NEA should not be supporting the mutilators. … Read the rest



It’s just like gravity, man

Aug 21st, 2022 2:49 pm | By

Astrophysics n Mai Gender Idenninny:

It was by pure chance that I wandered into a bookstore and saw Stephen Hawking’s The Grand Design on the front table. I cannot tell you what inspired me to pick up a book on cosmology. But I did, and in a few short minutes I had discovered a doorway into a new kind of physics—the kind of physics that doesn’t have all the answers, the kind of physics that disagrees with itself, the kind of physics that is messy and chaotic and, God forbid, fun. I changed my major to astrophysics the next week.

Over the following years, I learned about relativity, and how in the right circumstances time itself can slow.

Read the rest


Values

Aug 21st, 2022 10:28 am | By

The Guardian interviews Rusty Bowers, the former speaker of the Arizona house of representatives. He’s the one who refused to help Trump steal the election, and has now lost an election to a Trump attack-dog.

From the beginning, conservatism and the Republican party were interchangeable for Bowers. “Belief in God, that you should be held accountable for how you treat other people, those were very conservative thoughts and the bedrock of my politics.”

Wait. Being accountable for how you treat other people is a conservative value? I beg to differ. For one thing I think it’s a universal value, and for another thing it’s definitely a progressive or liberal or lefty value. Conservatism, at least in the US, endorses … Read the rest