Philip Pullman yet again.

You believe spiked-online?

— Philip Pullman (@PhilipPullman) July 2, 2022

Hi Philip, that’s my article. Would you care to point out any errors or inaccuracies? I take my job very seriously, unlike you I don’t write fantasy.

— Jo Bartosch (@jo_bartosch) July 2, 2022

As far as I can tell (replies are numerous and they go off into nested threads and subthreads and disappear into infinity) he never did: never specified and never apologized. Instead he pretended he wasn’t talking about Jo Bartosch’s article at all.

I wish my critics could actually bother to read what I say. I didn't mention Bartosch's work. I said not a word about it. I'm not interested in it. I'm

An interesting Facebook post (public) from last October (anonymously written) on pregnancy as a kind of battle:

I think it’s culturally time for us to re-frame how we think about the uterus.

It’s not a nurturing organ—it doesn’t need to be. A fetus is frighteningly good at getting the resources it needs to nurture itself. If they are implanted anywhere other than the womb (most often the fallopian tube, but also sometimes the bladder, intestine, pelvic muscles and connective tissue, and the liver) placental cells will rip through a body, slaughtering everything in their path as they seek out arteries to slake their hunger for nutrients.

Fetal cells will happily grow in any of these places, digesting and puncturing tissue,

Originally a comment by Enzyme on The old style of fascist often hid behind tears.

[I]t just so happens that protecting this minority requires us to reform society by jettisoning the hard-won freedoms of assembly and expression, along with the presumption of innocence and the ability for a professional to disagree with whatever governing body claims the consensus to be.

I want to suggest that it’s worse – deeper, more radical, more sinister – than that. What’s being jettisoned is the stability of the language in which any claim to rights must be articulated.

Yes, rights of assembly and expression and so on might be under threat, but they’re still thinkable as rights. Suppose you live in a society … Read the rest

Fox News is finding out that you can’t tell damaging lies about people and organizations with impunity. Who knew?!

In the months after the 2020 US presidential election, rightwing TV news in America was a wild west, an apparently lawless free-for-all where conspiracy theories about voting machines, ballot-stuffed suitcases and dead Venezuelan leaders were repeated to viewers around the clock.

There seemed to be little consequence for peddling the most outrageous ideas on primetime.

But now, unfortunately for Fox News, One America News Network (OAN) and Newsmax, it turns out that this brave new world was not free from legal jurisdiction – with the three networks now facing billion-dollar lawsuits as a result of their baseless accusations.

Dominion Voting Systems … Read the rest

Originally a comment by Der Durchwanderer on Entry points.

On one level, Julia Carrie Wong is correct — instrumentalising the concept of “transphobia”, as a particularly-potent example of the more general “phobia”-based political discourse which has come to dominate rhetoric over the last couple of decades, *is* a tributary that leads to a sort of popularist authoritarianism that is becoming the modern conception of fascism.

But of course Wong doesn’t see that it is she who, by attempting to direct the rivers of fear and hatred and contempt into controlling how other people express themselves and even what they are allowed to think, is the mouthpiece for modern fascism. Of course she is simply defending what she sees as … Read the rest

A reporter for the Guardian US – she calls herself “senior reporter” but the Guardian itself just calls her a reporter, as far as I can see. At any rate it would be good if she had some kind of grip on reality.

I think that we’re entering a period when the most meaningful political distinction will be fascist and anti-fascist. It’s really important to understand that transphobia is one of the most potent entry points to fascism today – and act accordingly.

— Julia Carrie Wong (@juliacarriew) July 3, 2022

That’s just a fucking stupid, uninformed thing to say. We know she’s talking about the radical feminists, not actual far-right street brawlers. She’s talking about Bindel and Stock and … Read the rest

The NY Times allows Pamela Paul to say the forbidden: the left hates women just as much as the right does.

There was a time when campus groups and activist organizations advocated strenuously on behalf of women. Women’s rights were human rights and something to fight for. Though the Equal Rights Amendment was never ratified, legal scholars and advocacy groups spent years working to otherwise establish women as a protected class.

But today, a number of academics, uber-progressives, transgender activists, civil liberties organizations and medical organizations are working toward an opposite end: to deny women their humanity, reducing them to a mix of body parts and gender stereotypes.

As reported by my colleague Michael Powell, even the word “women”

The “Feminist” Library.

LGB Alliance supporters will always show how deeply hate fuelled they are. Where there is transphobia, there is inevitably misogyny, homophobia, and racism. LGB Alliance have had funding withdrawn in the past and we hope it will be withdrawn again.

— The Feminist Library (@feministlibrary) July 2, 2022

… Read the rest

Via Facebook, credited to Elizabeth Haney:

Pro Lifer: Well the mother should just give the baby up for adoption if she doesn’t want the baby.

Me: So who will adopt the baby?

PL: I don’t know there’s lots of couples who want to adopt.

Me: Do you know any couple who is waiting to adopt?

PL: Um well not personally but like I know there’s lots of people waiting to adopt.

Me: Do you know what a domestic adoption costs?

PL: I don’t know. $15,000 maybe?

Me: The average cost of domestic adoption in the United States is $70,000 if you go through a private agency.

PL: Oh I didn’t realize it was that much.

Me: Yep it’s really … Read the rest

Jo Bartosch on Mermaids in 2020:

Mermaids advertises itself simply as a support service for children, young people and families. But there is a political dimension to it. Its recommendations to government include: the right of children to take legal action, without parental consent, against schools which do not refer to them by their chosen names and pronouns; the provision of hormone-replacement therapy for children under 16; and the fast-tracking of appointments and physical interventions for pubescent young people.

I assume “appointments” in that last clause means medical consultations.

It is understandable that a child who knows him or herself to be different might latch on to the idea that he or she really is the opposite sex. At

Still at it.

If it were “people” it would have been legal all along.… Read the rest

Mara Yamauchi in The Guardian a few days ago:

Why does the female category in sport exist? It exists so that those born female – women and girls – can participate, compete and excel in sport that is fair and safe. Without the female category, women and girls would be nowhere in sport because of the massive physical advantages that those born male enjoy.

…

The fact of you reading this article right now is due to the female category existing. Without it, I would be a complete nobody. When I set my personal best, 2:23:12 in 2009, I was ranked second in the world in women’s road running. But 2:23:12 is, being frank, nothing special by male standards.

The Mail wasn’t wrong about that “we’ll call the cops on you” page at Halifax. Home Who we are Inclusion and diversity.

Halifax: What we stand for

Ensuring an inclusive environment

At Halifax, we put our customers and colleagues first. We want to make sure we do all we can to champion every type of person, so we are working hard to create a fully-inclusive environment for our customers and colleagues, one that acknowledges all people and is representative of the communities we serve.

Part of this means we will act if we feel something is wrong. We don’t think it’s enough to simply not be racist. We will be actively anti-racist and stand alongside all of our people

Ooops.

Halifax customers are closing their accounts en masse today after its social media team told them to leave if they don’t like their new pronoun badges for staff in what is being branded one of the biggest PR disasters in British business history.

One account holder told MailOnline they have already pulled out investments and savings worth £450,000 while many more said they are closing ISAs, cutting up credit cards or transferring balances to rivals after they accused the bank of ‘alienating’ them with ‘pathetic virtue signalling’.

It’s Andy M, you see. He told them to close their accounts if they don’t like Halifax’s Pronoun Religion, so they said we’ll do that little thing.

The Mail adds the … Read the rest

Apparently Twitter thinks this is ok.

My family’s address (covered), a pipe bomb and a picture of a bomb-making handbook. The account remains active, naturally. #BeKind pic.twitter.com/IoEkHzpmpd

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) July 1, 2022

Updating: Actually I just looked and the account is now gone. Apparently it just took them a couple of weeks.… Read the rest

They just never stop.

Glinner reports a win:

The Information Commissioner has ordered the University of Oxford to disclose the scores and feedback it received from Stonewall as part of the lobby group’s controversial Workplace Equality Index scheme.

Of course their scheme isn’t about equality at all. Saying men are women has nothing to do with equality.

Following a Freedom of Information appeal undertaken as part of the “Don’t Submit to Stonewall” campaign initiated by Legal Feminist and Sex Matters, the Information Commissioner’s Office has written a hard-hitting decision that strikes at the secrecy of the scheme.

Thank you Legal Feminist and Sex Matters!

Stonewall requires organisations to sign a contract forbidding them to reveal either the feedback it gives them, or the

One terrible idea got shot down:

A group of educators in Texas proposed referring to slavery as “involuntary relocation” in second-grade classes — before being rebuffed by the State Board of Education.

The nine educators made up one of many groups tasked with advising the Texas board on changes to the social studies curriculum, which would affect the state’s almost 9,000 public schools.

…

Aicha Davis, a Democrat representing Dallas and Fort Worth, said during the meeting that the wording was not a “fair representation” of the slave trade, according to the Texas Tribune, which first reported the story.

Part of the proposed draft standards for the curriculum, the Tribune reported, directed students to “compare journeys to

Rhys McKinnon talking to Trevor Noah part 2:

Noah asks if trans women couldn’t compete against men instead of women.

So, like I said, this boils down to, are trans women really women [pumping fists up and down], are they really female. Because if you think yes, then we belong competing with other women. So it’s an extreme indignity to say, “I believe you’re a woman, except for sport.” Right? So you can’t single out one of the most important facets of our society, we are obsessed with sport, athletes are some of the most highly praised highly paid people on the planet, so you can’t say that like I believe you and I support you but not for

Et tu Trevor Noah?

Full interview with @SportIsARight: https://t.co/gs30lzxl5s

— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) July 1, 2022

I’m going to have to watch all 13.37 minutes of misery.

Noah starts with oh oh it’s so hard to talk about trans issues, people tense up, that’s why it’s good you’re here: we can talk about it.

Well, yes, they can talk about it, but here’s why its bad that Rhys McKinnon is on The Daily Show: it’s because he’s a cold-blooded ruthless liar and a bully who cheats women in cycling.

McKinnon starts with the Olympics motto that sport is a human right, then says people say it’s complicated, it’s a complicated issue, but he thinks it’s not.

It all