Originally a comment by Artymorty on A broader range of social justice causes.

All across the left, we’re seeing this. It’s because the left have conceptualized the causes we hold dear — the environment, gay rights, anti-racism, women’s reproductive rights — not as fixed, external objectives we’re trying to achieve at this point in time in political history (reduction in greenhouse gases, equal rights for sexual and racial minorities, access to contraception and abortion, etc.) but as relative, internalized political identities on an ever-shifting political spectrum. When a progressive cause gains ground and enters the mainstream zeitgeist, it’s not seen as a victory but a loss: the cause is no longer appealing to the activists who championed it because … Read the rest

Two steps forward one step back.

British sports governing bodies are under mounting pressure to reform their policies after world swimming banned transgender athletes who reached male puberty from elite women’s events.

Although the policy could have been passed just by Fina’s executive bureau, endorsement was sought from national governing bodies at an extraordinary general congress in Budapest ahead of the World Swimming Championships.

More than 70 per cent of governing bodies agreed, with 15.3 per cent against, and 13.1 per cent who abstained.

Those are the forward. Now the back.

The International Cycling Union (UCI) announced a new policy on Thursday, opting to allow transgender women to compete if they have gone through puberty provided their testosterone

… Read the rest

The thing about “the environment” is, we all live in it. We all depend on it for life. In that sense it’s not really political, and working to preserve it is not really political, because of the “all” bit.

But apparently activism to do that has become increasingly political.

When Aaron Mair ascended to the board presidency of the Sierra Club, he brought a new mission to the century-old environmental group: Where once it devoted itself solely to conservation issues, now it would embrace a much broader range of social justice causes.

That makes no sense to me. Social justice causes are fine, but conservation needs full attention all by itself.

Mair’s arrival accelerated then-executive director Michael Brune’s own

… Read the rest

Yet more terms that need to be defined. “Compassion” for instance.

This, from Megan Rapinoe, reads as a very decent summation of the correct answer to any “trans person in sports” debate, and also, a pristine example of what personal politics look like when you operate with the value of compassion first. pic.twitter.com/7YjYc5MRdg

— foster kamer. (@weareyourfek) June 19, 2022

If you operate with the value of compassion first, why does the compassion go to the Lia Thomases and not to the women he deprives of wins and medals? Why does he get compassion while they get told to accept it and shut up? Why does he matter while they don’t?

As for just disgusting, it’s what Rapinoe says that’s … Read the rest

Well that’s normal and safe and decent, just the sort of thing we want in a member of the US Senate.

https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1538881246109093890

Don’t be fooled. He doesn’t just stand there with the gun, and give us a talk. He goes all the way.

Bill Donahue at the Post says it’s a trend:

In late April, Republican Senate candidate and former Missouri governor Eric Greitens posted on Twitter a rather unsubtle video that captured him visiting a shooting range with Donald Trump Jr. As the clip opens, Greitens and the former first son are already hunched over their semiautomatic rifles. One second in, we watch as the shooters fire a hail of bullets — two hails, actually — until they

… Read the rest

It seems the Bristol police did as little as possible to stop the intimidation.

Mark Shelford is Avon and Somerset Police and Crime Commissioner, and ASPBristol is the Bristol police.

Dear @ShelfordMark @ASPBristol For the most were a terrible disappointment. We spent weeks collating information to show the opposition women were likely to face, including threats of violence. They supplied a handful of officers. It took an hour to get more in and even then (1)

— Iris Cassandra – Dusky Immigrant Maiden 🇪🇨 🇬🇧 (@EcuadorianMum) June 19, 2022

The final slap in the face was @ASPBristol shutting our pub venue down, one SFW had paid a high deposit to secure. They were not prepared to police our abusers and

… Read the rest

Shouty men out in force in Bristol today, bellowing in the faces of women.

#LetWomenSpeak @StandingforXX Speaker's Corner event in #Bristol. Some of us were there and took this video. Aggressive men rage-shouting at women. For speaking up for our rights. These #PoundShopNinjas will not silence us. pic.twitter.com/hgdq8XxDM2

— ♀️🦖The Women Coventry💚🤍💜 (@thewomencov) June 19, 2022

Women & GC men have been blockaded at a Bristol pub by trans activists who won't #LetWomenSpeak The police have closed the pub's gates pic.twitter.com/IGyduVuKVU

— Louise (@Loolovestea) June 19, 2022

Little lads crayoning – ‘Colston – Terfs are next’. pic.twitter.com/DPqwA7wpQa

— Sarah Phillimore (@SVPhillimore) June 19, 2022

Colston is the slave merchant whose statue was thrown in the harbor.

Right side of

… Read the rest

The blessings of empire:

During the heyday of the British empire, thousands of women from India and other parts of Asia were brought to London to look after young children – but many of these nannies were later abandoned and left to fend for themselves. Now, a building in London which housed them is set to be commemorated with a blue plaque.

That’s nice. Drag them half way around the world and then abandon them.

“Ayahs and amahs were basically domestic workers and the backbone of British families in colonial India. They looked after the children, entertained them, told them stories, and rocked them to sleep,” says Rozina Visram, historian and author of Asians in Britain: 400 Years of

… Read the rest

They just can’t ever word it honestly. BBC headline:

Fina stops transgender swimmers from competing in women’s elite events

Male swimmers.

Fina, swimming’s world governing body, has voted to stop transgender athletes from competing in women’s elite races if they have gone through any part of the process of male puberty.

They could have worded it so that the male puberty part comes first, but no, it has to be the “transgender” part first.

The decision was made during an extraordinary general congress at the ongoing World Championships in Budapest.

…

The issue in swimming has been catapulted into the spotlight by the experiences of American Lia Thomas.

Not so much the experiences as the photos and video clips. … Read the rest

A win at last!

https://twitter.com/FondOfBeetles/status/1538532982226669569

I had to look up FINA: it’s a [or the] competitive swimming organization type thing.

The vote was massive.

Superb! Here are the slides:https://t.co/AGM6PUEK3R

— Cathy Devine (@cathydevine56) June 19, 2022

Good news at last.… Read the rest

Man tries to get group of women barred from popular London pub:

https://twitter.com/matteottismith/status/1538261727124537344

He likes to go there himself. He doesn’t want those icky women in a place where he likes to go.

https://twitter.com/matteottismith/status/1538262122492313601

Everyone should have the right to tell bars and pubs and restaurants and bowling alleys to bar groups of women from going there. It’s only fair.… Read the rest

Why we can’t do anything about climate change chapter eleventy billion:

Within days, the conservative majority on the Supreme Court is expected to hand down a decision that could severely limit the federal government’s authority to reduce carbon dioxide from power plants — pollution that is dangerously heating the planet.

It shouldn’t be optional. It shouldn’t be up for grabs. We shouldn’t have the power to decide future generations have to face the full horror show.

The case, West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency, is the product of a coordinated, multiyear strategy by Republican attorneys general, conservative legal activists and their funders, several with ties to the oil and coal industries, to use the judicial system to rewrite environmental

… Read the rest

Who does this guy think he is??

https://twitter.com/AidanCTweets/status/1537872659916152835 https://twitter.com/AidanCTweets/status/1538104621142622208

Who does he think he is interrupting women on Twitter to demand when they are going to start doing what he tells them?

https://twitter.com/AidanCTweets/status/1538128140383428609

Who DOES he think he is? When is he going to get back to not telling women what to do?… Read the rest

Wo, here’s a crack in the ice: academics refused to sign a new Trans Declaration of What You Have To Do. Just up and said no, as if they had a right to.

A programme to encourage universities to follow guidance on trans discrimination is to be changed after Cambridge academics refused to sign it.

“Here’s our guidance on how you have to coddle us, sign right here.”

“No.”

Advance HE, a charity that advises higher education institutions, has bowed to pressure and pledged to alter its guidelines requiring universities to foster a “collective understanding” on the belief that gender can be chosen.

Should universities foster a collective understanding that the sun circles the earth every day? How about … Read the rest

Climate disaster hasn’t thrown anything at us here in the PNW so far this summer – it’s been unusually cool and cloudy, which is fine with me. Elsewhere though it’s not so mellow.

Summer in the American west is off to an explosive start, with extreme weather events ravaging multiple states in recent weeks. In Montana, historic flooding devastated communities and infrastructure in and around Yellowstone national park and forced a rare closure. Further south, reservoirs sank to new lows, triple-digit heatwaves left millions sweltering, and wildfires ripped through Arizona, New Mexico, Alaska and California.

Natural disasters, from floods to droughts to wildfires, have always occurred in areas across the west, and it will take time for scientists to

… Read the rest

The Post of course thinks this is a good thing, or at least wants to appear to. Gender idennniny taught in schools:

Some lessons are direct: “Who can describe what transgender means?” In other classes, the discussion is more subtle: “Remember, families can come in all shapes and sizes!”

Yes all! In some families the parents are shaped like pyramids and the children are shaped like orcas!

In Florida and several others states, educators are restricted in teaching about gender identity, but elsewhere, teachers are embracing the topic as the number of transgender and gender nonbinary children rises.

If it’s true that’s unfortunate, because transgender is a fiction and “gender nonbinary” is simply meaningless. If the number of transgender … Read the rest

Even at his dumbest and most dogmatic and fingers-in-ears how can he think he knows this?

https://twitter.com/jasonintrator/status/1537901875017633797

He can’t know that; no one can; it’s not possible. It’s not knowable that zero men who identify as women will ever rape anyone or that zero men who identify as women ever have raped anyone. There are in fact reports of trans women raping women. I would love to know how he, a philosopher, thinks he can know that it has never happened and will never happen.… Read the rest

Financial Times reporter Edward Luce talks to Hillary Clinton over lunch:

With an eye on the likely coming reversal of Roe vs Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court ruling that enshrined women’s right to abortion, I ask Clinton how far such unfinished business is likely to go. “If you go down the rabbit hole of far right intellectuals, you see that birth control, gay marriage — all of it is at risk,” she replies.

What is the Christian right’s endgame, I ask. Presumably they would not be able to create the theological dystopia depicted in Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel The Handmaid’s Tale? My question triggers a passionate response. Clinton speaks about how some states will make it illegal to abort

… Read the rest

Many are telling Jesse it’s not becoming religious, it’s been religious all along.

Anyway. Planned Parenthood is firmly in the cult.

This is becoming religious and religion makes me uncomfortable pic.twitter.com/8RF7rUO7Xh

— Jesse Singal (@jessesingal) June 17, 2022

… Read the rest

Being a woman is an inner experience (a lived experience, of course, as opposed to the other kind), a feeling, a sense, a gnosis, a revelation. It’s nothing to do with genitalia or any other physical attribute.

Unless…

https://twitter.com/IndiaWilloughby/status/1538151379973427206 https://twitter.com/IndiaWilloughby/status/1538149927871729664

It’s “she,” he says, I’m “she,” he says, but to emphasize or illustrate or verify his claim he includes a photo of himself, as if to say “LOOK, you can see for yourself I’m she, in a tight dress, with long hair, and a sexy sexy pose, and a receding hairline a girly smirk.”

(He also, I’ve only just noticed, has those weird fake eyebrows drawn on his forehead well above where the real ones were. Do people who do … Read the rest